[Chapter 3] 3.4 Automatic File Cleanup
Author: Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly & Mike Loukides
Date: 1998-08-04T21:32:32Z

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| Chapter 3 Logging Out |

## 3.4 Automatic File Cleanup

If you use a system to make temporary files (21.3), your .logout file can clean up the temporary files. The exact cleanup command you'll use depends on how you create the files, of course. The overall setup looks something like this in .logout:

    ~
    (set nonomatch; cd ~/temp && rm -f *) &

The parentheses run the commands in a subshell (13.7) so the cd command won't change the current shell's working directory. The C shell needs a `set` `nonomatch` (15.4) command so the shell will be quiet if there aren't any `temp` files to clean up; omit that command in Bourne-type shells. The `&&` (44.9) means that `rm` won't run unless the `cd` succeeds. Using `cd ~/temp` first, instead of just `rm ~/temp/*`, helps to keep rm's command-line arguments from getting too long (15.6) if there are lots of temporary files to remove.

If you could be logged in more than once, be careful not to remove `temp` files that other login sessions might still be using. One way to do this is with the find (17.2) command - only remove files that haven't been modified in the last day:

    xargs
    find ~/temp -type f -mtime +1 | xargs rm -f &

- JP

3.3 Electronic Fortune Cookies |  | 3.5 Stop Accidental C Shell Logouts