Date: Sun, 7 May 2000 19:12:30 -0500 (CDT) From: Steve Price <sprice@hiwaay.net> To: Doug Barton <DougB@gorean.org> Cc: Darren Wyn Rees <merlin@netlink.co.uk>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: "rm -rf *" - "argument list too long" Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.21.0005071911060.3613-100000@fly.HiWAAY.net> In-Reply-To: <39160161.4BCFEFE3@gorean.org>
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On Sun, 7 May 2000, Doug Barton wrote: # First, ignore the overly complicated and potentially dangerous answers # so far on this thread. :) Second, think about it for a minute. If "*" # provides a list that's too long for rm to handle, why not break it up # into smaller chunks? For example, if your files mainly have alpha # characters in their names, do something like: # # rm [a-c]* # # Starting with larger chunks, and going smaller as needed till the error # messages disappear. Something like this doesn't work? ls * | xargs rm Seems simple enough and should do it all in one pass. :) -steve To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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