bashfindpositional-operatorfind-util

bash find, only delete files - order of arguments

Say today is April 8th and I execute the following in bash.

cd /tmp
mkdir hello
touch -d 2015-04-01 hello

Then, say I want to delete all files in /tmp that are older than one day, but NOT directories and I execute this:

find /tmp -mtime +1 -delete -type f

Why is directory "hello" deleted if it's not a file?

Thanks!

Solution

  • The find command executes the expression in order. Since -delete is before -type, -type is never reached. Try:

    find /tmp -mtime +1 -type f -delete