Preventing "no matches found:"

Preventing "no matches found:"

[Tim McNerney]

Is there some way to indicate that patterns may have no matches? I am  
doing a cron job that does cleanup of all files older than a certain  
time and have a line like:

   rm ~/log/**/*.log(m+7)

and would like to avoid the message:

   no matches found: ~/log/**/*.log(m+7)

by somehow indicating, either through a setopt or a parameter for (),  
that no matches is not an error.

Thanks.

--Tim

Re: Preventing "no matches found:"

[Jos Backus]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 03:24:31PM -0700, Tim McNerney wrote:
>   rm ~/log/**/*.log(m+7)
> 
> and would like to avoid the message:
> 
>   no matches found: ~/log/**/*.log(m+7)

You could try this:

% setopt nullglob
% echo ~/log/**/*.log(m+7) | xargs rm

-- 
Jos Backus
jos at catnook.com

Re: Preventing "no matches found:"

[John Reese]

2005/7/22, Jos Backus <jos@catnook.com>:
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 03:24:31PM -0700, Tim McNerney wrote:
> >   rm ~/log/**/*.log(m+7)
> >
> > and would like to avoid the message:
> >
> >   no matches found: ~/log/**/*.log(m+7)
> 
> You could try this:
> 
> % setopt nullglob
> % echo ~/log/**/*.log(m+7) | xargs rm
> 
> --
> Jos Backus
> jos at catnook.com
> 

You can turn on noglob for a single pattern by adding a (N) flag.  So
you could just do:

rm ~/log/**/*.log(m+7,N)

But that doesn't really solve your problem, because if rm has no
arguments, it'll complain.  Now, my personal advice would be to not
care, but if you do care, you could do this:
deadlogs=(~/log/**/*.log(m+7,N))
((#deadlogs)) && rm $deadlogs

Re: Preventing "no matches found:"

[Jos Backus]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 05:14:49PM -0700, John Reese wrote:
> You can turn on noglob for a single pattern by adding a (N) flag.  So
> you could just do:
> 
> rm ~/log/**/*.log(m+7,N)
 
I knew there was a flag like that but I couldn't find it offhand.

> But that doesn't really solve your problem, because if rm has no
> arguments, it'll complain.  Now, my personal advice would be to not
> care, but if you do care, you could do this:
> deadlogs=(~/log/**/*.log(m+7,N))
> ((#deadlogs)) && rm $deadlogs

I used xargs so rm would never be called without arguments, avoiding this
problem. But your solution is a little more flexible, e.g. you could emit a
message depending on whether any files will be/were removed:

    deadlogs=(~/log/**/*.log(m+7,N))
    if (( $#deadlogs == 0 ))
    then
	echo "No longs removed."
    else
	rm $deadlogs
	echo "$#deadlogs logs removed."
    fi

-- 
Jos Backus
jos at catnook.com

Re: Preventing "no matches found:"

[Tim McNerney]

Thanks to both. I was looking for the ,N, as I've come up with a few  
methods to "silence" it otherwise, but I felt there was likely a more  
elegant manner.

--Tim

On Jul 22, 2005, at 7:10 PM, Jos Backus wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 05:14:49PM -0700, John Reese wrote:
>
>> You can turn on noglob for a single pattern by adding a (N) flag.  So
>> you could just do:
>>
>> rm ~/log/**/*.log(m+7,N)
>>
>
> I knew there was a flag like that but I couldn't find it offhand.
>
>
>> But that doesn't really solve your problem, because if rm has no
>> arguments, it'll complain.  Now, my personal advice would be to not
>> care, but if you do care, you could do this:
>> deadlogs=(~/log/**/*.log(m+7,N))
>> ((#deadlogs)) && rm $deadlogs
>>
>
> I used xargs so rm would never be called without arguments,  
> avoiding this
> problem. But your solution is a little more flexible, e.g. you  
> could emit a
> message depending on whether any files will be/were removed:
>
>     deadlogs=(~/log/**/*.log(m+7,N))
>     if (( $#deadlogs == 0 ))
>     then
>     echo "No longs removed."
>     else
>     rm $deadlogs
>     echo "$#deadlogs logs removed."
>     fi
>
> -- 
> Jos Backus
> jos at catnook.com
>