Using "find" in a script..

[Rich Lafferty]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 03:51:08PM +0100, WipeOut <wipe_out at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am creating a script to do a file backup but I am having isues with 
> cleaning out the older backups..
> 
> Basically each backup goes into a seperate directory named by date and 
> time and I want to remove the directories that are 15 days or more old.. 
> there will probably be 3 to 4 backups per day..
> 
> The command that should do its is..
> 
> find /backups/fcws/ -mtime +15 -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec rm -rf {};
> 
> The problem is that because there are currently no directories to delete 
> I get the error..
> 
> find: missing argument to `-exec'

The "because" is wrong there; you get that error because of the way
you're calling it. You want:

  find [...] -exec rm -rf {} \;

You need to escape the ";" to make sure that find gets it, not the
shell.

Cheers,

  -Rich

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Rich Lafferty --------------+-----------------------------------------------
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