Find and Delete File If It Is More Than One Hour Old in UNIX Shell

Q. How do I find out file last modification time using a shell script or command? How do I delete or take any other custom action for all files more than one hour old in /home/ftp/incoming/raw/ directory?

A. There are many ways (commands) to find out file modification time under UNIX / Linux operating system. You can try any one of the following command:

find command (with -cmin switch)

$ find /home/ftp/incoming/raw/ -maxdepth 1 -cmin +60 -name FileName
The -cmin option will print FileName’s status was last changed n minutes ago. This command will print all file names more than one hour old.

stat command (with -c switch)

To find time of last change as seconds since Epoch, enter:
$ stat -c %Z /path/to/file

date command (with -r switch)

To display the last modification time of FILE, enter:
$ date -r /path/to/file
I recommend using find command as it has -exec option to take action on all matching file such as move or delete files:
$ find /home/ftp/incoming/raw/ -maxdepth 1 -cmin +60 -name "*" -exec /bin/rm -f {} \;