Bash: delete based on file date stamp

Question

I have a folder with a bunch of files. I need to delete all the files created before July 1st. How do I do that in a bash script?

Answer 1

This should work:

find /file/path ! -newermt "Jul 01"

To find the files you want to delete, so the command to delete them would be:

find /file/path ! -newermt "Jul 01" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Answer 2

I think the following should do what you want:

touch -t 201007010000 dummyfile
find /path/to/files -type f ! -newer dummyfile -delete

The first line creates a file which was last modified on the 1st July 2010. The second line finds all files in /path/to/file which has a date not newer than the dummyfile, and then deletes them.

If you want to double check it is working correctly, then drop the -delete argument and it should just list the files which would be deleted.