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how to get directory names in a list and perform rm safely using shell

Hi,
would request your advise on this pls

I have a couple of directories with bunch of sub directories in date format

eg.
directory name :
/u01/app/date_list/2016-09-10
/u01/app/date_list/2016-09-11
/u01/app/date_list/2016-09-12
/u01/app/date_list/2016-09-13
/u01/app/date_list/2016-09-14
/u01/app/date_list/2016-09-15

would like to delete some directories by accepting date range in comma separated and delete only those directories.
e.g 2016-09-11,2016-09-13,2016-09-15

so outcome after delete would be
/u01/app/date_list/2016-09-10
/u01/app/date_list/2016-09-12
/u01/app/date_list/2016-09-14

I can hard code the base directory to be safe e.g

date_range=$1
base_dir=/u01/app/date_list
 for currentDt in $(echo ${date_range} | sed "s/,/ /g")
do
	if ([ "${currentDt}" != "" ] || [ "${currentDt}" != "*" ]); then
		# is this enough? or can we add some more validation ?
		# rm -Rf  ${base_dir}/${currentDt}
	fi
done

Open in new window

pls help is there any strong validation that I can perform. or a better way to handle this.

thanks in advance

Joseph Gan

You can use "rsync" to do this if you like:

Similar to this https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28963539/Unix-How-to-Bulk-Remove-Multiple-Directories-from-FileSystem.html

mkdir empty_dir

for date in 2016-09-11 2016-09-13 2016-09-15 ...

do

rsync -a --delete empty_dir /u01/app/date_pist/$date

done

Steve Bink

Three points for you:

1) Your logic is flawed - you need use '&&' instead of '||'
2) You can use the -d test to ensure you are targeting a directory.
3) Instead of piping your input through sed, use the variable substitution ${var//Pattern/Replacement}, such as ${currentDt//,/ }

Also, instead of sed/substitution, you could just create a loop to read $1, act on it, then shift to the next entry. This would require you to use a space delimiter on the command line, but should otherwise work the same.

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