Deleting Inactive 5 days Old Files - bash

Question

My aim is to delete more than 5 days old files which are no longer used by any process.
As a starter I have written following script, but it does not work, says line 10 command not found.
HOME=~/var
cd $HOME
for f in `find . -type f`; do
if [`lsof -n $f`]; then
echo $f
fi
done

Answer 1

hmm ye its not being done properly try this:
#!/bin/bash
DIR=$HOME/var
##########################################################
## files older than 5 days and recursive value set to 1
# for f in $(find $DIR -mtime +5 -maxdepth 1 -type f); do
##########################################################
for f in $(find $DIR -type f); do
# run lsof and look for pattern a-z send it to dev null
lsof -n $f |grep [a-z] > /dev/null
# If it was found the exit status will be 0 or success
if [ $? = 0 ]; then
echo "$f in use -->"
else
echo "File $f not in use"
fi
done
In your script you had defined HOME as ~/var - using squigly line in scripting I would try and stay away from. Secondly you were changing an environment variable's value within your script.. Try from your command line
env|grep HOME
This new method is a lot cleaner
Now here is another pointer that may mean you need to make further changes...
Will your script be running in a cron job ? will it be running as a cron entry as this existing user ? if it is set for root to run then above will fail I will show you how:
echo $HOME
/home/myuser
sudo -i
echo $HOME
/root
notice how the ~ or $HOME value for home has changed.. so if you do decide to run it as a cron entry as another user then try this
scriptuser="your_user"
getent passwd $scriptuser|awk -F":" '{print $6}'
if it is the current user that is then sudo su - or sudo -i then executing script then try :
getent passwd $(logname)|awk -F":" '{print $6}'