Find and delete folder + files within

Question

I got a directory structure like this:

/backups/
/backups/db/
/backups/db/01.01.2020/domain_a.sql.gz, domain_b.sql.gz, domain_c.sql.gz
/backups/db/02.01.2020/domain_a.sql.gz, domain_b.sql.gz, domain_c.sql.gz
/backups/db/03.01.2020/domain_a.sql.gz, domain_b.sql.gz, domain_c.sql.gz
/backups/db/04.01.2020/domain_a.sql.gz, domain_b.sql.gz, domain_c.sql.gz

Now Im running this command:

find /backups/db/ -mindepth 1 -mtime +2 -delete && rsync ...

When I execute this command directly in the shell, it works and the result is:

/backups/
/backups/db/
/backups/db/03.01.2020/domain_a.sql.gz, domain_b.sql.gz, domain_c.sql.gz
/backups/db/04.01.2020/domain_a.sql.gz, domain_b.sql.gz, domain_c.sql.gz

If I run this command by a cronjob, the directories wont be deleted and the result is:

/backups/
/backups/db/
/backups/db/01.01.2020/
/backups/db/02.01.2020/
/backups/db/03.01.2020/domain_a.sql.gz, domain_b.sql.gz, domain_c.sql.gz
/backups/db/04.01.2020/domain_a.sql.gz, domain_b.sql.gz, domain_c.sql.gz

This happens cause find first delete the files within these (2) folders and this action change the date of these folders, so that they dont match anymore the -mtime +2.

Is there any solution? I mean I could go with something like this, but I usually dont like to work with rm if its not necessary.

find /backups/db/ -mindepth 1 -mtime +6 -type d -exec rm -r {} +

find (GNU findutils) 4.7.0-git

Answer 1

I would suggest that you do this in two steps, and that you only delete files in the first step:

find /backups/db -mindepth 1 -type f -mtime +2 -delete

Then delete empty directories:

find /backups/db -mindepth 1 -type d -empty -delete

This way you don't compare timestamps on directories at all.

You could possibly combine the two operations into

find /backups/db -mindepth 1 \
    \( \( -type f -mtime +2 \) -o \
       \( -type d -empty    \) \) -delete

... but you may want to check without -delete that it does the correct thing first.