Clearing content of files recursively in centos Linux

Question

I have log files for many websites in a structure like /var/www/domainname.com/log/access.log and I am looking to clear their content. I need to find a way to do it in one command, but I do not seem to do it, I have tried with

find /var/www/ -type f -name "access.log" -exec cat /dev/null > access.log {} \;

But this actually creates a new access.log file copying contents of all access log files of all websites.

codeforester · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-18T17:43:52.027

8

You can use truncate command so that we can truncate all files at once:

find /var/www/ -type f -name access.log -exec truncate -c -s 0 {} +

-c ensures that no files are created newly
-s 0 sets file size to zero
{} + makes sure all files are passed in one shot (up to ARG_MAX)

See:

UsingFind - Greg's Wiki

edited May 18 '18 at 17:43

answered May 14 '17 at 08:06

codeforester

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered May 14 '17 at 07:25

2

How about:
find /var/www/ -type f -name "access.log" -exec rm {} \; -exec touch {} \;

answered May 14 '17 at 07:25

Moshe Gottlieb

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This would need two processes per file. The `truncate` solution needs only one. – codeforester Mar 06 '18 at 05:51
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@codeforester My centos does not have `truncate`, nor does my macOS system. `find`, `rm` and `touch` are available in _any_ system. – Moshe Gottlieb Mar 06 '18 at 12:17

Clearing content of files recursively in centos Linux

2 Answers2