Question

I have a folder that contains versions of my application, each time I upload a new version a new sub-folder is created for it, the sub-folder name is the current timestamp, here is a printout of the main folder used (ls -l |grep ^d):

drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-03-31 16:18 20110331161649
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-03-31 16:21 20110331161914
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-03-31 16:53 20110331165035
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-03-31 16:59 20110331165712
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-03 20:18 20110403201607
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-03 20:38 20110403203613
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-04 14:39 20110405143725
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-06 15:24 20110406151805
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-06 15:36 20110406153157
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-06 16:02 20110406155913
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-10 21:10 20110410210928
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-10 21:50 20110410214939
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-10 22:15 20110410221414
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-04-11 22:19 20110411221810
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-01 21:30 20110501212953
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-01 23:02 20110501230121
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-03 21:57 20110503215252
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-06 16:17 20110506161546
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-11 10:00 20110511095709
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-11 10:13 20110511100938
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-12 14:34 20110512143143
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-13 22:13 20110513220824
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-14 22:26 20110514222548
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-05-14 23:03 20110514230258

I’m looking for a command that will leave the last 10 versions (sub-folders) and deletes the rest.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

There you go. (edited)

ls -dt */ | tail -n +11 | xargs rm -rf

First list directories recently modified then take all of them except first 10, then send them to rm -rf.