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I need to find all old directories in current directory.
find in AIX does not provide -maxdepth parameter.
There is only -depth and -prune parameters.
It is possible to write something like following: 

find ./* -type d -mtime +31 -prune

But it will not work if current directory is empty.
What is the correct way to find all old directories in current directory only, not in all sub-directories of the current directory?

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  • 1
    What exactly do you want to do? Starting your find at '.' (not './*') should be enough.
    – vonbrand
    Jan 30 '13 at 21:45
  • "." will not work if to use -prune parameter. I need to find old directories in current directory only, not in all subdirectories of current directory.
    – Volodymyr Bezuglyy
    Jan 30 '13 at 21:49
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What I believe you likely want is something more like:

find . -not -name . -type d -prune -mtime +31

This will list the immediate directories in current directory older than 31 days. Adding the -not -name . means that the current directory (root of the tree) will already be 'false' before it gets to the -prune action; all the other directories will be pruned.

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  • I did not know about -not argument. I am not sure that this will work in AIX, but I checked it now in online Linux emulator and it works as I need. Thank you.
    – Volodymyr Bezuglyy
    Jan 30 '13 at 22:06
  • -not is not standard, use ! instead which is.
    – Stéphane Chazelas
    Jan 30 '13 at 22:09
  • find . ! -name . -prune ... which says to “prune” (don't descend into) any directories except “.”. content.hccfl.edu/pollock/unix/findcmd.htm
    – Volodymyr Bezuglyy
    Jan 30 '13 at 22:44
  • But why following command does not work? find /tmp/dir ! -name /tmp/dir -type d -prune
    – Volodymyr Bezuglyy
    Jan 31 '13 at 9:42
  • The -name takes a single pathname component and should not have a '/' in the argument, hence it would match nothing. You would have to use either -path or be a little smarter about which 'dir' to select.
    – Arcege
    Jan 31 '13 at 14:47

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