bash: How to delimit strings to find files

Question

What syntax should I use in a bash script to list files based on 3 dynamic values: - older than X days - in a specified directory - whose name contains a specified string?

FILEAGE=7
FILEDIR='"/home/ecom/tmp"'
FILESTRING='"search-results-*"'
FILES_FOR_REMOVAL=$("/usr/bin/find "${FILEDIR}" -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +${FILEAGE} -name "${FILESTRING}" -exec ls -lth {} \;")
echo ${FILES_FOR_REMOVAL}

If I try the above I get:

-bash: /usr/bin/find "/home/ecom/tmp" -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +7 -name "search-results-*" -exec ls -lth {} \;: No such file or directory

Answer 1

Remove superfluous quotes:

FILEAGE=7
FILEDIR='/home/ecom/tmp'
FILESTRING='search-results-*'
FILES_FOR_REMOVAL=$(/usr/bin/find "${FILEDIR}" -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +${FILEAGE} -name "${FILESTRING}" -exec ls -lth {} \;)

Answer 2

Your syntax for 'find' looks ok. Try removing the quotes around the command string, i.e.

FILES_FOR_REMOVAL=$(/usr/bin/find "${FILEDIR}" -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +${FILEAGE} -name "${FILESTRING}" -exec ls -lth {} \;)

Answer 3

FILEAGE=7
FILEDIR='/home/ecom/tmp'
FILESTRING='search-results-*'
/usr/bin/find "${FILEDIR}" -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +${FILEAGE} -name "${FILESTRING}" -exec /bin/ls -lth '{}' \;

There were some extra quotes that created the error. Also specify full path to /bin/ls to avoid problems with potential aliasing of ls(1). And to get filenames on a separate line, I dropped the $FILES_FOR_REMOVAL variable. You can also use

/usr/bin/find "${FILEDIR}" -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +${FILEAGE} -name "${FILESTRING}" -ls

Answer 4

(I can't add comments, but ... )

To reliably handle file names with spaces, you may want to consider storing the file list in a temp text file instead of a variable and loop through it using a while construct (instead of a for)

For example:

FILEAGE=7
FILEDIR='/home/ecom/tmp'
FILESTRING='search-results-*'

TEMPFILE=".temp${RANDOM}"
CMD="find \"${FILEDIR}\" -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +${FILEAGE} -name \"${FILESTRING}\" -exec /bin/ls -lth '{}' \;"

$CMD > $TEMPFILE # write output to file
while read thefile; do
    do_somthing_to $thefile
done < $TEMPFILE

rm $TEMPFILE # clean up after

Or, if you're only going to use the list once, pipe the output directly to the while construct:

$CMD | while read thefile; do
    do_something_to $thefile
done