Re: [nmh-workers] Cleaning up old messages

[Ken Hornstein]

>I've done some poking into it, and I know I can go from folder to 
>folder, delete all the messages, and then use some external shell 
>command to really delete them, but frankly, this is a bit overwhelming 
>for me. Is there a way (or a script that comes close to) letting me just 
>delete and really remove all files older than a certain date or anything 
>like that?

Sure.  pick(1) is the perfect tool for this job.  E.g.:

% pick +folder -before "Jan 01 2016"

will generate a list of messages, and you can do:

% rmm `pick +folder -before "Jan 01 2016"`

Or if there are too many for that:

% pick +folder -before "Jan 01 2016" | xargs rmm

To do all of your folders, you could do (assuming Bourne shell):

% for f in $(folders -recurse -noheader -nototal | awk '{ print $1}')
do
pick +$f -before "Jan 01 2016" | xargs rmm
done

And ... damn, dude.  I'm sorry to hear about your health issues.  My
best wishes for you.

--Ken