perl - Creating a script to delete old log files, that allows me to pass directory/age/regex arguments

Question

I'm trying to create a PERL script to delete old log files. One of the key things I want the script to be able to do is allow me to pass arguments for directory, name of the file (such as test.log-*), and age of the file.

It's been a while since I've used PERL and I'm not that great anyway, so I'd appreciate some help. I'm also not terribly familiar with the getopt::long module. Here's what I'm thinking so far, and while I'm sure it's not correct, please give me any feedback that might assist.

I want to run the script along the lines of "script.pl --dir /release/logs --type test.log-* --days 7"

#!/usr/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use Getopt::Long;

my $file;
my ($dir,$type,$days);
GetOptions( 'dir'   => $dir,
            'type'  => $type,
            'days'  => $days);

foreach my $file (<$dir/$type>){
   if (-M $file < $days) {
       print "
 Deleting log more than '$days' old:".$file;
       unlink $file;
       # or die "
 Failed to remove $file";
   }
}

exit;

Answer 1

If you insist on using Perl, look into File::Find & friends. Though if you're on a *nix box you should probably be aware of find(1) for tasks this common.

try: find /release/logs -name test.log-* -mtime +7 -delete

If you want to test it out 1st, leave off the -delete flag & it will just print a list of the files it would have otherwise deleted.