From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2011-11-22T19:39:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Removing directories older than x days old

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Multicom D.
<multicomdatateam@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I am trying to write a script that will remove directories that are
> older than 5 days old.  I can't seem to get the datetime for the
> directory to be usable for comparison.
>
> require 'fileutils'
>
> class CleanupDirs
>  def cleanup()
>    Dir.foreach("/mydir/") do |entry|
>      puts entry
>      etime = File.stat(entry)
>      vAgeInDays = ageInDays( etime.ctime )
>      if vAgeInDays > 5
>        Dir.delete(entry)
>
>      end
>    end
>  end
>
>  def ageInDays(days)
>    ydate = Time.new
>    ydate = ydate - ( 24 * 60 * 60 * days)

You do not want to substract the number of seconds from a timestamp to
get the age.  For the age of something you need to calculate now -
timestamp.

>    return ydate
>  end
> end
>
> CleanupDirs.new.cleanup
>
> I keep getting the error  Time can't be coerced into Fixnum (TypeError).
>
> Can someone point out what I am doing wrong?

Better do

def age_in_days(time_stamp)
  (Time.now - time_stamp) / (24 * 60 * 60)
end

The whole thing might be a tad more efficient if you do

def age_in_days(time_stamp, now = Time.now)
  (now - time_stamp) / (24 * 60 * 60)
end

now = Time.now
...
if age_in_days(ts, now) > 5
...
end

Also that way you have a single reference point which might make some
things easier.

Few more remarks: you do not need a class for this as the only method
(cleanup) does not have any parameters and does not work with instance
state.

Note also that you might rather want to use #mtime instead of #ctime.

You should also treat entries different which are directories.  Maybe
you rather want to use Find.find or a glob pattern like Dir['**/*'].

Kind regards

robert


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