Scripting Question

I need to write a shell script that I can add to as time passes, that looks at a certain directory, and removes files older than X days. The directory contains many different report files, all named as "REPORTNAME.XXXXX" where X is a random string for the report.

I need to have different days retention for each report.

I'm sure this is a quick one-liner and I can just add lines and adjust the days for each different report I want included in the script, but so far the different variations of find, etc. I have used have not really given me what I want.

For now I am using a -exec ls -l to show the output, but anticipate changing that to -exec rm {} \; when all is said and done.

If someone could help with the output using the above method, or if you have a better suggestion, I would truly appreciate it.

You might find it easier to write the script in perl. I have an example in my stash of a script which uses the perl stat file test to test the age of a file before removing it. I bet you could hack it to do what you want in just a couple of minutes.

christo

Isn't this just:
find . -name REPORT.\* -mtime +5 -print | xargs ls -l

that's a nice use of 'find' that I've never thought of before

christo

find . -name REPORT.\* -mtime +5 -print | xargs ls -l
that is correct, this FASTER (find uses: ls -li)
find . -name REPORT.\* -mtime +5 -ls
NOTA: in this example using SVR4 find, the -print option is obsolete.