How do you write a perl script to calculate the age of a file

[kleinbiker7]

Hi, I need to write a script that will delete a file if it is more than 2 days old. Does Perl have the means to do this job?

Thanks.

[ezekiel]

I think the -M operator gives you the number of days since a file was last modified. Hence:

if (-M $filename > 2) {
 unlink ($filename);

}

should work if you want to delete files that were last modified over 2 days ago. -A and -C do the same thing based on last access time and last inode change.

[VSarkiss]

Ah, when will the golf urge pass? You could do: unlink $filename if -M $filename > 2; saving yourself two parentheses and two squiggly braces. ;-)

It even reads exactly as the questioner proposed: "delete the file if it is more than two days old".

[marcink]

Yes.

Look at 'man perlfunc' for 'readdir' function and '-M' operator.

-marcink

[petdance]

You can also look up the stat() function if you want the absolute date something was created.

xoxo,
Andy

%_=split/;/,".;;n;u;e;ot;t;her;c; ".   #   Andy Lester
'Perl ;@; a;a;j;m;er;y;t;p;n;d;s;o;'.  #   http://petdance.com
"hack";print map delete$_{$_},split//,q<   [e-mail]   >

[kurt1992]

Perl has the means to do many things, though this particular example can also be solved with the following shell command, or bourne shell script containing this command. Be careful where you invoke this!

# find . -type f -mtime +2 | xargs -i rm {}

In Perl, you could use the File::Find module in conjunction with the aforementioned -M operator to accomplish the same thing as that shell command, and much more. You should also check out the stat function, which provides detailed inode information. Again, please be careful. This code deletes everything under $dir.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use File::Find;

my @files = ();
my @paths = ();
my $dir = '/home/kurtw/perlmonks/test5';

find(\&_filewanted, $dir);

for my $file ( @files ) {
 if (unlink $file) {
 print "removing $file\n";
 } else {
 print "could not unlink $file\n";
 }
}

sub _filewanted {
 if ( ((-M $_) > 2) && -f $_  ) { # files, not directories
 push @files, $File::Find::name;
 }
}