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Date: 1 Jul 2018 16:01:48 -0500
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.2.21.1807011556150.48232@ary.local>
From: "John R. Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: "Paul Schmehl" <paul.schmehl@gmail.com>
Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Problem deleting files
In-Reply-To: <010DDED160955AC68C7EFA46@Pauls-MacBook-Pro.local>
References: <20180701202153.A94AA28BD3C2@ary.local>
 <010DDED160955AC68C7EFA46@Pauls-MacBook-Pro.local>
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>>  $ rm -rf .
>>
>>  (Be really sure you're in the right directory.)
>
> Yes, I did. It returned argument list too long.

Not to contradict you, but the phrase "too long" does not appear in the 
source code to the rm program, and I am reasonably sure it does not 
produce that message.  On the other hand the shell does produce that 
message when expanding wild cards.  So are you sure you tried this:

$ rm -rf .

and not this?

$ rm -rf *

They're not the same.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly