I actually have to rework it now since there are multiple directories that I need to run this script for. Basically, there's a directory labeled builds with about 10 directories in it as well. I'm now trying to have this script at the root level and be able to go through each of these 10 sub-directories and remove all files except the most recent 3.

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If you are trolling thru a directory tree why not use the find command: # untested find /my/testdir -type f -print|xargs ls -t|tail .... This should work unless you need to keep exactly 3 files in each directory.

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In the big picture what I'm interested in doing is trolling through the directory tree and running a script from the root directory that will go through my "builds" directory which contains multiple directories. Each directory within the builds directory has multiple files eating up space. I'm trying to get the script to go through, and delete all files from the builds directory that are not the most recent 3. So, say there's 3 directories within the builds directory, DirA, DirB, and DirC. For example: DirA has 10 files dating anywhere from todays date back to a couple months ago. DirB has 3 files. DirC has 5 files from 5 months ago. I want this script to go through and do the following: A) If the directory has 3 files in it, then the script doesn't touch that directory, so DirB would remain the same. B) If there are more then 3 files, then the script should go through the files, determine which are the 3 most recent...then remove the other files. I can get it to search by directly specifying the directory, but for some reasons I can't get it to look in any of the directories when I'm in the root directory.

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There are many ways to do this, but I'd use the find command to search for the directories in your directory structure: #!/bin/ksh sdir=/home/nails/sct3/build find "$sdir" -type d -print|while read xdir do if [[ $xdir == $sdir ]] then # skip the build directory continue fi echo $xdir echo "changed to directory $xdir in build tree" # perform the rm here done # end script After changing to the directory, run your remove command string previously covered. Note that I'm using a full path to the directory to be searched. Using a relative path forces you to cd back to where you started from. Let me know if you have any further questions. Nails

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Nails, Good news and bad news lol. Good news is that the following works...somewhat. #!/bin/ksh sdir=/builds find "$sdir" -type d -print|while read xdir do if $xdir==$sdir;then continue fi echo $xdir echo "Changed to directory $xdir" ls -t $xdir|tail +4 ##havn't added |xargs rm yet## done Bad news is that I get this output: ./removeOld.sh[11]: /builds==/builds: not found /builds Changed to directory /builds ./removeOld.sh[11]: /builds/removeOld==/builds: not found /builds/removeOld Changed to directory /builds/removeOld testEar1.0.6.01.ear testEar1.0.5.01.ear testEar1.0.4.01.ear testEar1.0.3.01.ear ./removeOld.sh[11]: /builds/removeOBLess==/builds: not found /builds/removeOBLess Changed to directory /builds/removeOBLess ./removeOld.sh[11]: /builds/removeOld2==/builds: not found /builds/removeOld2 Changed to directory /builds/removeOld2 Now...the other good news is that it DOES work. I got the output I was expecting to see. The files : testEar1.0.6.01.ear testEar1.0.5.01.ear testEar1.0.4.01.ear testEar1.0.3.01.ear should be listed since they are going to be deleted and there should be no other files from the other directories since they contain 3 and no more. But I'm confused on why I'm getting an error from the conditional statement. Also, I took the "[[ ]]" out of the statement because I was receiving an error stating that it couldn't find a "then" even though it was present. Thanks in advance for any suggestions. Regards ~Verta

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I may have slightly mislead you. I meant to change to the directories. What happens if you do this: # untested #!/bin/ksh sdir=/builds find "$sdir" -type d -print|while read xdir do if $xdir==$sdir;then continue fi cd $xdir echo "Changed to directory $xdir" ls -t |tail +4 ##havn't added |xargs rm yet## done

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Nails, Currently this is my script: #!/bin/ksh sdir=/builds find "$sdir" -type d -print|while read xdir do echo "Changed to directory $xdir" cd $xdir ls -t $xdir|tail +4|xargs rm done Now, it does everything I need it to do. But the only catch is, is that if there's more then 3 directories in my "Builds" directory it tries to delete the oldest ones. Now, it's not really a problem/issue since I'm not issueing the rmdir command, but it's kind of an eyesore lol. So right now I'm trying to find a way to get it to only delete the files inside the subdirectories of the "Builds" directory and only the files. Thanks again for your help. If you can come up with anything to fix this minor issue it'd be appreciated. Regards ~Verta

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Nails, Just an update. The following seems to work 100%. #!/bin/ksh sdir=/buildsTest find "$sdir" -type d -print|while read xdir do if [ $sdir = xdir ]; then echo "Nothing to remove" else cd $xdir echo "Changing to directory $xdir" ls -t $xdir|tail +4|xargs rm fi done Thanks for everything. Regards ~Verta

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You're welcome. Glad to help. Be advised that you may have trouble with the above script if any directory name contains a space. It'll help if you have double quotes around your variables such as: cd "$xdir"

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Thanks for that tip. I created a test folder with a space in the name on purpose and using "" proved to work. I actually ran into another problem. That was the script was comparing files and subdirectories alike(if there were subdirectories). So I modified it a little and this is the outcome which works 100% in all cases, regardless of spaces, directories within directories, or number of files in the directory. #!/bin/ksh sdir=/builds find "$sdir" -type d -print|while read xdir do if [ $sdir = $xdir ]; then continue else cd "$xdir" echo "Changed to directory $xdir" ls -lt|awk '$1!~/^drwx/{print $9}'|tail +5|xargs rm fi done Thanks again for the help, it's appreciated. Regards ~Verta

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