How can I delete files that are not used in code files in linux?

Question

I am running Fedora 18 linux and I have a PHP project that I have been working on for some time. I am trying to clean things up for a production deploy of a web application. I have a folder of icon images that over time has collected files that are not used in my code any more, either because I changed to a different icon in code, or the image file was used to create other icons. What I am looking to do is to make a backup copy of the entire code project, and HOPEFULLY using a combination of find , rm and grep on the command line, scan the entire folder of the images, and if the images are not used anywhere in my code files, delete them. I did some searching on the web and I am finding things that find a line of text in a file and delete it, but I have not found anything quite like what I am trying to do.

Any help is appreciated...

Answer 1

So here is what I came up with. I put together a shell script that does what I need. For the benefit of those who stumble upon this, and for those who want to critique my solution, here it is. I chose to skip files that were found in .xcf files because these are only used to create many of the icon files and some of the .png images would grep to these .xcf files.

#!/bin/bash
FILES=/var/www/html/support_desk/templates/default/images/icons/*
codedir=/var/www/html/support_desk_branch/

for f in $FILES
do
  bn=$(basename $f)

  ext="${bn##*.}"

  echo "Processing $bn file..."

  if ! fgrep --quiet -R $bn $codedir; then
    if [ ext != 'xcf' ]; then
      rm $f
    fi
  fi

done

Now I have ONLY the image files that are used in the PHP script files. Just so as not to miss any of the icon files used in the menu, which is defined in a table in a mysql database, I created an sql dump file of the data for that table, and put it in the path of the application files prior to running the shell script.

Answer 2

The simplest way to find unused icon files would be to do a build of your complete project and then look at the access-times of the icon-files. Those that were not read recently (including with grep, of course) would show up readily.

For instance, supposing that you did a backup an hour ago, and did a build ten minutes ago — the access times would be distinct. Then

find . -amin +15 -type f

should give a nice list of "unused" files. If you're sure of the list (you did do a backup, right?) then you could purge the unused files:

find . -amin +15 -type f -exec rm -i {} \;

If you are really certain, you can remove the -i option.