Linux-删除嵌套目录中的文件（仅）

Question

I have a set of user folders, where they can keep their PDFs. I want to create a cron job which would delete all files which are over a week old (and files only, not directories) within all the nested directories.

So, my directory structure looks as following:

users
│  index.html
│
+---+ a-long-string-of-random-characters-1
|   │   file1.pdf
│   │   file2.pdf
│   
|
+---+ a-long-string-of-random-characters-2
│   │   file1.pdf
│   │   file2.pdf
|
|
...

I already have about 8 directories. I need to delete all pdfs in the user directory and it's sub-direcotries.

I use the following to delete old db backups:

00 06 * * * find /path/to/backups/* -mtime +14 -delete

Some parts are quite obvious. +14 would become +7 , /* would be /*.pdf

00 06 * * * find /path/to/users/*.pdf -mtime +7 -delete

But what about the sub-directories?

Cheers

Answer 1

Replace:

00 06 * * * find /path/to/users/*.pdf -mtime +7 -delete

With:

00 06 * * * find /path/to/users/ -type f -iname '*.pdf' -mtime +7 -delete

Notes:

1. find will automatically recurse through subdirectories. We just need to tell it to start at /path/to/users/ and it will look through all of users subdirectories recursively.

2. To limit the search to regular files, we add -type f .

3. To limit the search to files whose name end in .pdf , we add -iname '*.pdf' (using -iname makes the match case-insensitive, which is usually a good idea) .

4. Before creating the above cronjob, try:

    find /path/to/users/ -type f -name '*.pdf' -mtime +7 

   This will show you what files would be deleted. If you are satisfied that this list is what you want, then you run it again with -delete or create the cronjob.