如何在多个文件夹层次结构中删除除最后几个文件以外的zip文件

Question

Folder structure goes like this:

Main_Folder:
           A
             --> File1.zip
             --> File2.zip
             A11
                --> File3.zip
                --> File4.zip
             A12
                --> File5.zip
                --> File6.zip
           B
           C

Similary, this remains same for B, B11 , B12 & C, C11 , C12 respectively. I want to execute the command from Main_Folder path, such that it traverses into rest all inner folders and deletes all zip files except last few zip files. Could you please help me out to achieve this ?

I tried

find $PWD -printf "%TY-%Tm-%Td %TT %p\n" | sort -n | grep "zip" | head -n -5| xargs rm -rf

But this keeps latest files overall, not folder by folder.

Answer 1

You usually choose some time that you want times kept.

# DANGEROUS!!!
$ find PATH -mtime +2 -name "*.zip" -delete

But you wont be sure that there are enough files kept. eg if your backup stopped 2 days ago, you may remove your last backups.

For it is good to first check you have enough backups. eg

existing=`find PATH -mtime -2 | wc -l`
if (( existing > 5 )); then
  find ... -delete
fi

Please test code very carefully before running. I did not check syntax and calculations of the snippets above. Commands a re dangerous to run. Use common sense.

HTH

Now I see you want to remove folders. Then you can search for -mtime ... -type d and use above logic. But insted of -delete you'd use something like -exec rm -rf \\{\\} \\; which is even more dangerous.

Or you can get a list of folders and then delete zip files over them. It really depends on specific use case.