Deleting by Age!

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks!
I an trying to have my code looking in a specific directory or directories for file(s) that are the oldest of all the other files found in that specific directory. After that I need to delete the oldest file found.
My code now can find the age of all the files, but how can I delete de oldest file(s) found inside this directory(ies)?
Thanks for the help!!!




#!/perl/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32;

use Win32::NetResource;
use Time::localtime;


my ($dirh,$dirh_in, @dircontent, $file, @filenames, $age, @outputFiles
+ , $all_dir_path);

$age='';
$dirh_in='';

my $path='C:\\files\\logs';

  opendir(DIRH, "$path") || die "Cannot opendir $path: $!";
  foreach $dirh (sort readdir(DIRH)) {
      $all_dir_path= $path."\\".$dirh;
      $all_dir_path=~s/(.*?)\.+//g;

if($all_dir_path ne ""){
    chomp($all_dir_path);

           opendir $dirh,$all_dir_path or die "Can't open - Check Path
+ -  $all_dir_path";              
              push (@dircontent, map { $_="$all_dir_path/$_"; $_;} rea
+ddir($dirh));    

          closedir($dirh) or die "Can't close $path";
     }

}

closedir(DIRH) or die "Can't close $path";
          
foreach (@dircontent) {

    next unless -f;    # ignore all non-normal files.    
    $age=-M $_;

    if($age){    
    unlink($_) || die "Cannont unlink $_: $!";
    print "$_ - $age\n";
    }

}
[download]

Comment on Deleting by Age! Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Deleting by Age! by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Jun 23, 2006 at 14:38 UTC
It's simpler than that with glob, default arguments, and a little logic. `for (glob "$path/">) { unlink if -f and -M _ > $cutoff; }` [download] That takes advantage of $_ as default argument for -X and unlink. The "_" handle saves a stat call. That omits the tree expansion, which is easily handled by wrapping in a recursive sub. (Added) `sub unlink_all ( my ($path, $cutoff) = @_; local $_; for (glob "$path/") { unlink, next if -f and -M _ > $cutoff; unlink_all($_, $cutoff) if -d _; } 1; }` [download] After Compline, Zaxo	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Deleting by Age! by McDarren (Abbot) on Jun 23, 2006 at 14:41 UTC
merlyn has an article that pretty much covers this. It's actually an excellent article, and a good introduction to File::Find and directory recursion. Thoroughly recommended! Cheers, Darren :)	[reply]
Re: Deleting by Age! by ptum (Priest) on Jun 23, 2006 at 14:30 UTC
I think a combination of File::Find and File::stat (with use of the mtime method) may do the trick. No good deed goes unpunished. -- (attributed to) Oscar Wilde	[reply]
Re: Deleting by Age! by leocharre (Priest) on Jun 23, 2006 at 14:39 UTC
sort it by age, reverse it, and shift the first filename from the array, then unlink it. If you are doing a stat and you have a ton of files, consider first getting all the stat into into a hash for all the files, then sorting, otherwise your sort will be running multiple stat for each file. Which is slow on a ton of files.	[reply]
Re: Deleting by Age! by shmem (Chancellor) on Jun 23, 2006 at 14:46 UTC
Is this the script that you use for this task? What do you get as output? I guess it dies at line 26 saying something like `Can't use string ("whatever") as symbol ref while "strict refs" in use`. What do you get? Could you post the error messages along with "it doesn't work?" You do `use Win32; use Win32::NetResource; use Time::localtime;` [download] but you do not use anything of those modules whatsoever. What gives? Along with the poor formatting it makes one setence of a professor spring into my mind: "Not only is this all incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly, and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree." ;-) Please post the output of that script. --shmem _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo. G°\ / /\_¯/(q / ---------------------------- \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."· ");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Deleting by Age! by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Jun 23, 2006 at 19:29 UTC
I think Zaxo's way is the shortest to-date in this thread if you want a Perl-only solution. But, since you are on Windows... perl -e "@file = (split/\n/,`dir /od /b /S`)[0..5]; print @file;" [download] Which returns the top six oldest files in the current or any of its subdirectories. Celebrate Intellectual Diversity	[reply] [d/l]