Delete Files Older Than x Days on Linux
From Lowell at https://www.howtogeek.com/288/delete-files-older-than-x-days-on-linux/
The find utility on Linux allows you to pass in a bunch of interesting arguments, including one to execute another command on each file. We’ll use this in order to figure out what files are older than a certain number of days, and then use the rm command to delete them.
Command Syntax
find /path/to/files* -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;
Note that there are spaces between rm
, {}
, and \;
.
Explanation
The first argument is the path to the files. This can be a path, a directory, or a wildcard as in the example above. I would recommend using the full path, and make sure that you run the command without the exec rm to make sure you are getting the right results.
The second argument, -mtime
, is used to specify the number of days old that
the file is. If you enter +5, it will find files older than 5 days.
The third argument, -exec
, allows you to pass in a command such as rm
.
The {} \;
at the end is required to end the command.