The code below was posted to delete by "dvergin" to show an example of how to delete files after 7 days:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $file;
my $dir_spec = '/home/archive/logs/old';
opendir(LOGDIR, $dir_spec) or die "Can't open $dir_spec: $!\n";
while ( defined($file = readdir(LOGDIR)) ) {
   if (-M "$dir_spec/$file" > 7) {
      unlink("$dir_spec/$file") 
          or die "Can't delete $dir_spec/$file: $!\n";
   }
}
closedir(LOGDIR);
[download]

"The key to this is the file test operator -M which returns the number of days old the given file is. Just the thing you needed."

I posted a question to this yesterday but noticed the date of the original post was back in Feb. so I'll try again..

I'm curious as to how the -M operator works. Since Unix doesn't keep track of file creation dates, does -M check for the last modified? So in the example above would the given file be deleted if it wasn't modified in the last 7 days? I'm also assuming that one could use the -M to test directories as well. Is this true? :]