Safe Deletion & Maintenance

Dry-run with -print before -delete — always preview first

# ALWAYS run with -print first to see what would be deleted
find /tmp -name "*.log" -type f -mtime +7 -print

# Only after verifying the list, switch to -delete
# find /tmp -name "*.log" -type f -mtime +7 -delete

Find and delete empty files

# Dry run — list empty files
find ~/atelier/_bibliotheca/domus-captures/docs -type f -empty -print

# Delete empty files
# find ~/atelier/_bibliotheca/domus-captures/docs -type f -empty -delete

Find and delete empty directories

# Dry run — list empty directories (depth-first so nested empties resolve)
find ~/atelier/_bibliotheca/domus-captures/docs -type d -empty -print

# Delete empty directories
# find ~/atelier/_bibliotheca/domus-captures/docs -type d -empty -delete

Delete files older than 30 days — dry-run then execute

# Dry run — list files older than 30 days in /tmp
find /tmp -type f -mtime +30 -print | head -20

# Count what would be deleted
find /tmp -type f -mtime +30 -print | wc -l

# Execute deletion
# find /tmp -type f -mtime +30 -delete

Delete .bak files with confirmation — -ok prompts per file

# Create test fixtures
echo "old backup" > /tmp/test-cleanup.bak
echo "another backup" > /tmp/test-cleanup2.bak

# -ok prompts y/n for each file (safer than -exec rm)
find /tmp -name "*.bak" -type f -ok rm {} \;

Clean pacman cache older than 90 days

# Dry run — list stale cache packages
find /var/cache/pacman/pkg -name "*.pkg.tar.zst" -type f -mtime +90 -print | wc -l

# Preview the oldest 10
find /var/cache/pacman/pkg -name "*.pkg.tar.zst" -type f -mtime +90 \
  -exec ls -lh {} + 2>/dev/null | sort -k6,7 | head -10

Remove orphaned .pyc files — bytecode without matching .py

find ~/atelier -type d -name "__pycache__" -print

# Remove __pycache__ directories (dry run)
find ~/atelier -type d -name "__pycache__" -print

# Execute
# find ~/atelier -type d -name "__pycache__" -exec rm -rf {} +

Delete core dumps

# Find core dumps
find /tmp /var/tmp ~ -name "core" -o -name "core.*" -type f 2>/dev/null | head -20

# Check sizes before removing
find /tmp /var/tmp ~ \( -name "core" -o -name "core.*" \) -type f \
  -exec ls -lh {} + 2>/dev/null

Clean /tmp files older than 7 days

# Dry run — list with sizes
find /tmp -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +7 -exec ls -lh {} + 2>/dev/null

# Count by extension
find /tmp -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +7 -print | \
  awk -F. '{print ($NF == $0) ? "no-ext" : $NF}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

Find and remove broken symlinks

# -xtype l matches symlinks whose target does not exist
find ~/atelier/_bibliotheca/domus-captures -xtype l -print

# Remove broken symlinks (dry run first!)
# find ~/atelier/_bibliotheca/domus-captures -xtype l -delete