In OS X Lion under zsh, how can I set up a /Users/username/tmp directory which deletes after X days?

Question

I'm new to scripting and regular jobs on OS X, so appreciate the help in advance.

I'm looking to have a tmp directory in my homedir, as in /Users/username/tmp which I can use as my "downloads" directory.

My goal is to have files/directories in this directory delete after say 10 days after the atime (last access).

So I am looking for a script and also the method to run it regularly on OS X Lion using ZSH as the shell.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Write a script that deletes files in a folder if their atime is earlier than ten days ago, then have it run daily (I don't know what the best mechanism for that is on OSX; on Linux I'd use anacron, or failing that run it hourly with cron).

Sample script (takes the directory, eg ~/downloads, as first argument):

#!/bin/zsh

setopt extended_glob

targetpath=$1

[[ -d $targetpath ]] || (echo "Directory does not exist" 1>&2 && exit 1)

rm ${path}/**(.a+10) # ** will match recursively, and the bit in brackets is an
# extended glob qualifier, matching ordinary files with an atime more than ten days ago.
unsetopt extended_glob
exit 0

There's probably all sorts of things wrong with that, and if you habitually use extended_glob you don't need it turned on and later off in the script, naturally.