A shell script to empty older items from the trash

After finally getting tired of remembering to "Empty Trash" at regular intervals, I decided to write a script (36KB download; source code on macosxhints) that automatically cleans files out of the trash after they've been there for seven days. It will even use sudo to clean out things that I don't have permission to erase -- if that option is available. There are many options to choose from, just use --help to see them all.

This script is designed to be very efficient to run, so I run it hourly. There is not (yet) any provision for maintaining the Trash at a particular size. I recommend adding a line to your cron file like this:

@hourly python /your/path/to/dirscan.py

This will clean things out after a week, and checks each hour for new items to remove. It pays attention only to top-level entries within .Trash, so any directories you put in the trash will be deleted automatically.

[robg adds: The code download link is from the author's site, and will be the best place to grab the latest version of the script. I mirrored the source as of today on macosxhints.com, just in case the parent site goes away at some point. Note that I haven't tested this one. Finally, for those interested in a size-limited trash can, this hint and the associated comments offer a few solutions.]

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A shell script to empty older items from the trash
Authored by: Hamid on Tue, Jun 19 2007 at 8:20AM PDT

TrashTimer allows you automatically empty Trash according to your settings from 1-7 hours/days/weeks/months:

http://www.hieper.nl/html/trashtimer.html

find ?
Authored by: Soliman on Tue, Jun 19 2007 at 10:16AM PDT

@hourly for cleaning the Trash seems a bit overkill, no ?

Here is what I have in my crontab:

### Everyday at 6.45 45 6 * * * /usr/bin/find /Users/Soliman/.Trash -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -not -newerat '7 days ago' -delete

I use 'access time' as a reference (penultimate letter in newerat) and remove what is not newer (thus older) than 7 days.
You can add -ls if you want to know what was deleted...

find ?
Authored by: TonyT on Tue, Jun 19 2007 at 11:30AM PDT

Nice cron, but why "-mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1" ?

find ?
Authored by: Soliman on Tue, Jun 19 2007 at 11:43AM PDT

-mindepth 1 is to avoid removing .Trash itself :)

-maxdepth 1 could also be done with -prune (don't know if there is a difference here) and was added in order to remove directories that I've put to the Trash as one, and not file by file...

find ?
Authored by: TonyT on Tue, Jun 19 2007 at 1:41PM PDT

Thanks, I'll be adding this tonight!

find ?
Authored by: TonyT on Wed, Jun 20 2007 at 9:03PM PDT

Couldn't get it to work in crontab, but I was successful id creating a launchd LaunchAgent. Great tip, nice and simple. No need for a program or long script. Thanks!

If interested, the launchd script is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">;
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Disabled</key>
<true/>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.tony.DeleteTrash7DaysOld</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/find</string>
<string>/Users/Tony/.Trash</string>
<string>-mindepth</string>
<string>1</string>
<string>-maxdepth</string>
<string>1</string>
<string>-newerat</string>
<string>-not</string>
<string>7 days ago</string>
<string>-delete</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>ServiceDescription</key>
<string>DeleteTrash7DaysOld</string>
</dict>
</plist>

find ?
Authored by: Soliman on Thu, Jun 21 2007 at 3:06AM PDT

Nice too, though I'm surprised it did not work in cron :(

---
--
Sylvain

find ?
Authored by: TonyT on Sat, Jun 23 2007 at 7:14AM PDT

Not sure why I couldn't get cron to work. It should have, but while trying to figure out the problem I leaned that Apple has depreciated cron since 10.4 in favor of launchd (a google or wiki will give background on this). Lingo, a nice freeware app, is helpful in writing launchd playlists. One advantage of using launchd over cron is that I can specify RunAtLoad (good for me as I have a laptop that I don't keep running 24/7)

find ?
Authored by: TonyT on Sat, Jun 23 2007 at 7:08AM PDT

I noticed an error.

Replace:
<string>-newerat</string>
<string>-not</string>
<string>7 days ago</string>

With:
<string>-not</string>
<string>-newerat</string>
<string>7 days ago</string>

find ?
Authored by: maxbook on Thu, Jun 21 2007 at 9:21PM PDT

wow. that's great.
i an really new to such stuff and i don't know what usr/bin/find is about? can you explain it to me?

find ?
Authored by: TonyT on Sat, Jun 23 2007 at 7:20AM PDT

find is a UNIX command locate in the usr/bin/ directory. When running cron or launchd you need the absolute path, hence usr/bin/find. To learn more about find, enter "man find" in Terminal

find ?
Authored by: TonyT on Mon, Jul 2 2007 at 8:51PM PDT

My trashed folders weren't deleting. It looks like find is changing the access time. changing -newerat to -newermt fixed that problem, but I guess if I trash a file without modifying it that it will get deleted sooner than anticipated.

find ?
Authored by: Soliman on Tue, Jul 3 2007 at 12:04PM PDT

This is strange, for me it works flawlessly and a ls -latu .Trash/ shows that the access time of my Trashed files did not change... could the problem be related to the launchd trick ? What happens if you just type the command in a Terminal ? (check access times before and after, do they change ?).

---
--
Sylvain

[ Reply to This | # ]

find ?
Authored by: TonyT on Tue, Jul 3 2007 at 5:31PM PDT

Same at the command line:

$ ls -latu
drwxr-xr-x 2 Tony Tony 68 Jul 3 20:26 untitled folder 2

/usr/bin/find /Users/Tony/.Trash -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -not -newerat '7 days ago' -delete

$ ls -latu
drwxr-xr-x 2 Tony Tony 68 Jul 3 20:29 untitled folder 2

I'm running OS X 10.4.10 on an Intel MacBooh

find ?
Authored by: Soliman on Wed, Jul 4 2007 at 1:36AM PDT

Ok, I finally got it : for me it works because find doesn't change the atime of files but changes that of directories !!!

The solution ? Change -maxdepth 1 to -prune, which gives :

/usr/bin/find /Users/[blabla]/.Trash -mindepth 1 -prune -not -newerat '3 days ago' -delete :)

---
Sylvain

[ Reply to This | # ]

find ?
Authored by: TonyT on Wed, Jul 4 2007 at 12:47PM PDT

I had already tried -prune without success:

$ ls -latu
drwxr-xr-x 2 Tony Tony 68 Jul 4 15:39 untitled folder 2

$ /usr/bin/find /Users/Tony/.Trash -mindepth 1 -prune -not -newerat '7 days ago' -delete

$ ls -latu
drwxr-xr-x 2 Tony Tony 68 Jul 4 15:43 untitled folder 2

-newermt seems to be my only solution.

What ver of OS X are you running?

find ?
Authored by: Soliman on Thu, Jul 5 2007 at 1:20AM PDT

I run OSX 10.4.10, however if I didn't notice the problem it is probably because I didn't have any directory in my Trash, only "flat" files (and for them no access time change)...

To solve the directories problem something like the following might work :
/usr/bin/find -d .Trash -mindepth 1 $ -type d -and -empty $ -or $ -not -newerat '3 days ago' $ -delete

But it doesn't seem to work as I expected (-or problem ?), whereas separating the two commands does what it should...

find ?
Authored by: Soliman on Thu, Jul 5 2007 at 9:02AM PDT

Actually I discovered that the problem is caused by -delete so changing it to use rm seems ok.

Here is my new crontab entry :
/usr/bin/find /path/to/.Trash -mindepth 1 -prune -not -newerat '7 days ago' -exec /bin/rm -Rfv {} \;

DISCLAIMER: use rm -Rf at your own risk ;)

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