Delete all files except the newest 3 in bash script

Question

Question: How do you delete all files in a directory except the newest 3?

Finding the newest 3 files is simple:

ls -t | head -3
         


        

Answer 1

As an extension to the answer by flohail. If you want to remove all folders except the newest three folders use the following:

find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d -printf '%T@\t%p\n' |
 sort -t $'\t' -g | 
 head -n -3 | 
 cut -d $'\t' -f 2- |
 xargs rm -rf

The -mindepth 1 will ignore the parent folder and -maxdepth 1 subfolders.