bash - How to remove files using find and rm command?

Question

find -mmin -19 -exec rm '{}';

It will find the modified files 1st and then remove them. but it gives me error as below, find: missing argument to `-exec'

Also tried various combinations like,

find -mmin -19 -exec rm '{}';
find -mmin -19 -exec rm '{}'/;

Answer 1

You need space between the command and ;

find -mmin -19 -exec rm {} ;

find already provide -delete option, so you don't need to use -exec rm ..:

find -mmin -19 -delete

---

-delete

Delete files; true if removal succeeded. If the removal failed, an error message is issued. If -delete fails, find's exit status will be nonzero (when it eventually exits). Use of -delete automatically turns on the -depth option.

Warnings: Don't forget that the find command line is evaluated as an expression, so putting -delete first will make find try to delete everything below the starting points you specified. When testing a find command line that you later intend to use with -delete, you should explicitly specify -depth in order to avoid later surprises. Because -delete implies -depth, you cannot usefully use -prune and -delete together.