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Coume

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2008-02-10

Posts: 78

Website

[Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

Hello,

I have small bash script that I use to check the size of all the folders in a given directory:

$ cat /home/lcoumetou/Scripts/ds
#!/bin/bash

# display the directories size
for i in *;
do if [ "$i" != "mnt" ]
    then
      du -sh "$i"
    fi
done

[~/Music/.To_sort]Arch64$ ds
127M    0 Autumn ChillOut I ll be around
1.8M    CD.Lily.Allen-Alright.Still-2006-GBM
120M    Cafe Del Mar - Chill out - House Vol II CD 2(Full Album) Chemical Brothers & Moby Vs Prodigy and Fat Boy Slim.mp3
158M    Cafe Mambo Ibiza 08 Mixed by Andy Cato
202M    Cream_Ibiza__Mixed_By_Paul_Van_Dyk
220K    Gotan Project - La Revancha Del Tango - EAC Lame192 - Guxfer
319M    Ibiza 2008
95M     Ibiza Electrohouse 2008
113M    Ibiza Megamix 2008
192M    Ibiza Most Wanted (2007)
198M    Las Tardes En Ibiza 2008
171M    On The Beach 4 Las Salinas Ibiza (2008)
233M    The Nu Sound Of Ibiza (Kontor Records)
219M    Tunnel_Goes_Ibiza Vol_7
328M    VA_-_Hed_Kandi_The_Mix_2009-3CD-2008-LiR

Do you think it could be possible to tweak it in order to remove every folder with a size below 5MB?
Is there a way to do a test by parsing the size a the folder?

Thanks in advance.
Ludo

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

Look into the find command. You will need to use the -size option

find -size n[cwbkMG]

you can then pass the 'exec rm -rf' to it and remove all folders less than 5mb

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-04-13 16:00:51)

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Procyon

Member

Registered: 2008-05-07

Posts: 1,819

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

Don't use du -h

du -s * | while read size filename; do
if [ $size -lt 5000 ]; then
echo "$filename" is under 5MB
fi
done

Procyon

Member

Registered: 2008-05-07

Posts: 1,819

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

Look into the find command. You will need to use the -size option

find -size n[cwbkMG]

you can then pass the 'exec rm -rf' to it and remove all folders less than 5mb

A directory itself is only 4KB, so that would only work for deleting individual files under 5MB. (with -type f)

Last edited by Procyon (2009-04-13 16:03:46)

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

A directory itself is only 4KB, so that would only work for deleting individual files under 5MB. (with -type f)

I haven't tried  it out yet, but couldn't we use '-type d' along with '-depth' with the find command to check for directories?

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-04-13 16:21:49)

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There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

Coume

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2008-02-10

Posts: 78

Website

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

Don't use du -h

du -s * | while read size filename; do
if [ $size -lt 5000 ]; then
echo "$filename" is under 5MB
fi
done

Thanks Procyon, working great

Procyon

Member

Registered: 2008-05-07

Posts: 1,819

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

A directory itself is only 4KB, so that would only work for deleting individual files under 5MB. (with -type f)

I haven't tried  it out yet, but couldn't we use -d with the find command to check for directories?

-type d? You do not want to do that. Because a directory is 4KB regardless of what is inside (sometimes a little bigger) what happens is EVERYTHING will be deleted.

As I said the only thing you can use find on for checking size is individual files.

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

A directory itself is only 4KB, so that would only work for deleting individual files under 5MB. (with -type f)

I haven't tried  it out yet, but couldn't we use -d with the find command to check for directories?

-type d? You do not want to do that. Because a directory is 4KB regardless of what is inside (sometimes a little bigger) what happens is EVERYTHING will be deleted.

As I said the only thing you can use find on for checking size is individual files.

I stand corrected then . Thanks for clearing that up Procyon.

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Forum Rules

There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

Coume

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2008-02-10

Posts: 78

Website

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

Don't use du -h

du -s * | while read size filename; do
if [ $size -lt 5000 ]; then
echo "$filename" is under 5MB
fi
done

Thanks Procyon, working great

In fact, I discovered a problem
If I use that script in a folder with files, all the files (<5MB) in the folder gets deleted

Procyon

Member

Registered: 2008-05-07

Posts: 1,819

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

That sounds terrible, I hope you didn't lose anything important. It is a risky script no matter how you look at it.

There are checks you can perform, like
[ ! -d "$filename" ] && continue
before the rm statement.

Last edited by Procyon (2009-04-13 19:37:10)

Coume

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2008-02-10

Posts: 78

Website

Re: [Bash] Delete a folder if size < 5MB

no, I haven't lose anything important as I was playing in a test folder

I just wanted to report this little *unexpected* behaviour should someone do a basic copy/paste to prevent them erasing lots of important files.