Shell script to count files, then remove oldest files

Posted by Nic Hubbard on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Nic Hubbard
Published on 2010-06-02T17:27:48Z Indexed on 2010/06/02 17:43 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

|

bash

|

shell

|

shell-scripting

I am new to shell scripting, so I need some help here. I have a directory that fills up with backups. If I have more than 10 backup files, I would like to remove the oldest files, so that the 10 newest backup files are the only ones that are left.

So far, I know how to count the files, which seems easy enough, but how do I then remove the oldest files, if the count is over 10?

if [ls /backups | wc -l > 10]
    then
        echo "More than 10"
fi

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