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Finding Files

4.3 Cleaning Up

This section gives examples of removing unwanted files in various situations. Here is a command to remove the CVS backup files created when an update requires a merge:

find . -name '.#*' -print0 | xargs -0r rm -f

You can run this command to clean out your clutter in `/tmp'. You might place it in the file your shell runs when you log out (`.bash_logout', `.logout', or `.zlogout', depending on which shell you use).

find /tmp -user $LOGNAME -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -r rm -f

To remove old Emacs backup and auto-save files, you can use a command like the following. It is especially important in this case to use null-terminated file names because Emacs packages like the VM mailer often create temporary file names with spaces in them, like `#reply to David J. MacKenzie<1>#'.

find ~ \( -name '*~' -o -name '#*#' \) -print0 | xargs --no-run-if-empty --null rm -vf

Removing old files from `/tmp' is commonly done from cron:

find /tmp /var/tmp -not -type d -mtime +3 -print0 | xargs --null --no-run-if-empty rm -f find /tmp /var/tmp -depth -mindepth 1 -type d -empty -print0 | xargs --null --no-run-if-empty rmdir

The second find command above uses `-depth' so it cleans out empty directories depth-first, hoping that the parents become empty and can be removed too. It uses `-mindepth' to avoid removing `/tmp' itself if it becomes totally empty.