Sstrhsrtj

We want to delete the files under /tmp that are older than 100 minutes.

What is the difference between:

find /tmp -type f -mmin +100 -exec rm {} ;

and:

find /tmp -type f -mmin +100 -exec -delete 

second - Is it possible to add some print / echo in the command so that it will print each file it deletes?

/tmp/hadoop-unjar7118762490947462979/META-INF/NOTICE was deleted !!!

Two alternatives come to mind for printing the file as it's being removed:

find /tmp -type f -mmin +100 -printf '%p was deleted!!n' -delete

or

find /tmp -type f -mmin +100 -exec rm -v {} ;

The former instructs GNU find to print the file name (fully-pathed) before deleting it; the latter tells find to execute rm -v on each filename, where -v instructs (GNU) rm to be verbose about what it's doing.

Output of the former would be like:

/tmp/.sh_history.6668 was deleted!!

/tmp/krb5cc_6094 was deleted!!

/tmp/.sh_history.18394 was deleted!!

While the output of the latter would be:

removed ‘/tmp/.sh_history.6668’

removed ‘/tmp/krb5cc_6094’

removed ‘/tmp/.sh_history.18394’

Another item to note on -exec rm {} vs -delete is that -exec rm will search your $PATH for rm while -delete directly unlinks the file. Not usually an issue, but something to be aware of.

Example:

$ pwd

/tmp/jeff

$ ls

bar  foo  rm

$ cat rm

#!/bin/sh

echo Hi, I am the fake rm: "$@"

$ PATH=/tmp/jeff:$PATH

$ find . -type f -exec rm {} ;

Hi, I am the fake rm: ./rm

Hi, I am the fake rm: ./bar

Hi, I am the fake rm: ./foo

With -delete, find will also traverse the search path in a depth-first manner by default. This allows it to delete directories that it will not later try to enter. You would have to use find with -depth if you use -exec rm -rf {} on directories, or you will cause find to complain about not finding the directories that it thought were there.