Help with purging directories and rmdir

[Goodeye]

I have created a perl script which will recursively delete files based on 2 command line arguments. I am attemping to add the ability for this script to clean out empty directories on it's way through also. I have tried using the rmdir command in a couple of variation, but have not been able to get this to work properly. Could someone offer any suggestion on how to correct this script? I would appreciate any ideas.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

#######################
#  Script to test functionality
#  before an actual purge is run
#  on a given directory.
#  Live version is named without the
#  word test.
#################################

use File::Find;
my $byteCount=0;
my $fileCount = 0;
my $dateCreated;
my $readable_mtime;
my $searchDir = $ARGV[0]; #read in the passed directory to test existence
my $days_of_purge = $ARGV[1]; # read in the number of days before purging.x

# Convert the days of purge to the correct Unix time.
my $converted_purge_time = $days_of_purge * 86400;  # 86400 = number of seconds in 24 hours

if ( -d $searchDir) {


# Issue the find command passing two arguments
# The first argument is the subroutine that will be called for each file in the path.
# The second argument is the directory to start your search in.

        finddepth(\&cleanup, $ARGV[0]);
        print "$fileCount files are using $byteCount gigabytes\n";


# Subroutine that determines whether we matched the file extensions.

         sub cleanup {
                my ($dev, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid, $rdev, $size, $atime, $mtime, $therest) = stat($_) or die "Unable to stat $_\n";
                my @t = localtime $mtime;
                $date = sprintf "%02u/%02u/%02u %02u:%02u:%02u", $t[4] + 1, $t[3], $t[5] % 100, $t[2], $t[1], $t[0];
                if ((time - $converted_purge_time) > $mtime) {
                                if ( -f ) {
                                        print "$File::Find::name  $date $size\n ";
                                        $byteCount += $size/1024/1024/1024;
                                        $dateCreated= $mtime;
                                        $fileCount++;
                                        unlink("$File::Find::name") or die "Unable to delete $File::Find::name \n";
                                        print $File::Find::dir . "\n";
                                        rmdir $_;
                                }
                }

         }
} else {
        print "Directory does not exist\n";
}

 

[KevinADC]

The first thing to do is error check the rmdir() function:

rmdir $_ or die "Unable to rmdir $_: $!\n"

this might help you figure out what the problem is. If you want to remove directory trees you may want to consider File:ath instead of File::Find. Make sure to read the File:ath documentation carefully before using it if you decide to.

------------------------------------------
- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[Goodeye]

The error check reports this message:

/transcode/tc-video/08-05-2007/sdm.txt 07/07/07 12:00:00 0
/transcode/tc-video/08-05-2007
Unable to remove sdm.txt : No such file or directory


The first line is a print of $File::Find::name and the second is a print of $File::Find::dir.

I have tried the rmdir with both $File::Find::dir and $_. File::Find:ir reports the error "Unable to stat" the directory name.

 

[KevinADC]

You have to remove all files and sub folders from a folder before it can be deleted. That is most likely the root cause of your problem.

------------------------------------------
- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[Goodeye]

In the case of the above error, the only file in that directory was the sdm.txt that I touched with a certain modified stamp to fit in my search pattern. The script removes files older than a certain date which I can pass on the command line. Once it unlinks the last file in the directory, I was expecting the rmdir to then remove the directory. I have folders 07-07-2007 through 08-09-2007 that are not populated but won't delete with this method. As I am using a modified time to search files, I am hesitant to use the rmtree as it can blast good files in an active folder.

 

[KevinADC]

well, this can't work: rmdir $_;[/]

$_ is the name of the current file, but you said you tried $File::Find::dir which did not work either.

Are you sure the script is deleting the files and the folder is empty?

------------------------------------------
- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[travs69]

Does file::find put you in the directory of the file it finds? If so you will need to get out of that directory before you try and rmdir it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Travis - Those Who Say It Cannot Be Done Are Usually Interrupted by Someone Else Doing It; Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions;

 

[KevinADC]

hmm... good point, and by default File::Find does do a chdir() into each directory. That behavior can be changed with a setting in File::Find:

no_chdir => 1

or something like that.

------------------------------------------
- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[Goodeye]

I think I have solved it. The fact that I was in the current directory and that the Find worked from last to first in the directory list was causing the problem. I took each entry from the $File::Find::dir output and put into an array

if ( -f ) {
                                        print "$File::Find::name  $date $size\n ";
                                        $byteCount += $size/1024/1024/1024;
                                        $dateCreated= $mtime;
                                        $fileCount++;
                                        unlink("$File::Find::name") or die "Unable to delete $File::Find::name \n";
                                        print $File::Find::dir . "\n";
                                        push (@dirs, $File::Find::dir);
                                }

At the end of the script, I sort the array, chdir to my home, and then rmdir the array

        # Loop through the directories which reported files and delete them if empty
print "@dirs\n";
@dirs = sort(@dirs);
print "@dirs\n";
chdir;
foreach $dir (@dirs) {
        print "$dir\n";
        rmdir $dir or die "Unable to remove $dir : $! \n";
}

Thanks to everyone for their help.