How can I delete the oldest directory in a directory?

Question

I am writing a backup programm, and I need to execute a bash command to delete the oldest directory in a specific directory.

I have found this command to print the oldest directory:

find -type f -printf '%T+ %p\n' | sort | head -n 1

And this command to delete a directory and all its content:

rm -rf [oldest directory name]

How can I combine between these two in order to delete the oldest folder?

Answer 1

This should work with any path (Thanks to @StéphaneChazelas for the head trick) and should be POSIX compatible (formatted for readability):

printf %q "$(
    find . -type d -printf "%T+ %p\0" |
    tr '\0\n' '\n\0' |
    sort |
    head -n 1 |
    tr '\0\n' '\n\0' |
    sed -e 's/^[^ ]\+ //')"

To actually remove the directory, replace printf %q with rm -rf --