Find directories with all files inside older than X?

Question

Is it possible on linux to find directories where all contained files and directories (and sub-directories' files etc.) are older than a given age? In other words, if a directory has one or more files within that have a modification date more recent than a given threshold, that directory should not be listed. If all of the files and folders below that directory are older than the given threshold, then that directory should be listed.

The use case is that my home directory is full of hidden directories, and I'm sure that many of them are left overs from previous installations, and software that I haven't used in years. I'd like to be able to find these directories, so I can easily decide whether to cull them.

Answer 1

find -type f -mtime +30

to check files older than 30 days

if you add -iname '.*' it will show you the hidden files

or -type d for directories

Answer 2

You could use the following workaround to implement your need:

$ touch -t 201206010100 some_file
$ find . -newer some_file

At touch man page:

-t STAMP
    use [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] instead of current time

There is also -d option of touch but i haven't used it. You could give it a try.

[Edit] you could use touch -d option as follows to generate a file at a given date:

$ touch -d "Wed Jun 27 09:44:44 EEST 2012" some_file
$ ls -l some_file
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 0 2012-06-27 09:44 some_file

The you could use the same approach i mentioned above