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Dan
Asked: 2011-03-09 08:24:39 +0800 CST

How to list directories that aren't being symbolic linked to in a directory?

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I'm trying to do some cleanup similar to this question. In a UNIX OS, I want to delete the directories that aren't being symbolic linked to in a given directory.

e.g. I have a deployment script that creates a directory structure for an app like this:

1.0-201103071711/
1.0-201103071718/
1.0-201103071729/
current -> /opt/myapps/fooapp/1.0-201103071729/

I want to create a script that will remove the directories in that directory that aren't the "current" directory. Thanks!

unix symbolic-link find

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    This Bash snippet will find directories that have no directories linked to them. It will also find broken links.

    for f in *; do (($(find -L -maxdepth 1 -samefile "$f" 2>/dev/null | wc -l) == 1)) && echo "found: $f"; done

    It does not look outside the current directory or in subdirectories.

    Be sure to test it thoroughly.

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  2. As the referenced question mentioned, there isn't an official way to do this. As an alternative to Dennis' option, I present the following horrible hack. Please be sure to test thoroughly as well. I'd recommend replacing the -exec portion with an ls until you're sure it works.

    touch current;find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -mmin +2 -exec rm -rf {} \;

    It will check the current directory only. It essentially touches the directory linked by 'current', and then removes anything with a modify time older than two minutes. If the other directories haven't been touched in a while, you can increase the timer on -mmin, so you don't accidentally nuke the directory you want. This is obviously only viable if you don't mind changing the timestamp on the current directory.


    --Christopher Karel

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