in reply to Re^3: Delete all but the most recent backup file
in thread Delete all but the most recent backup file

Hi thanks, that works great! I modified the regular expression to the file naming format that we use at work. I just noticed that the system of sorting and preserving the latest backup and deleting the rest is the most efficient - my supervisor and dad (he's a programmer) said the same thing. I don't know why I stuck with the idea of using flags, I guess it's the little mistakes the not-that-experienced programmers make. This is a good learning experience! I'll figure out the syntax related to sorting that has been implemented and understand it fully. Thanks again to both of you - take care!
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Re^5: Delete all but the most recent backup file
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 28, 2013 at 02:29 UTC

    Here is an alternative idea

    Archive the backups for a month before deleting them (like zip/7-zip)

    Since the files are nearly identical, it should compress really well, so in the same space you have of 24hrs of backups you can have ~20 days of backups (one zip per day), and if you combine those zip/day backups into a single archive, you'll have space for more days :)