Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 11:13:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: iaccounts@ibctech.ca (Steve Bertrand) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Removing thousands of files using rm Message-ID: <200407061513.i66FDLa16321@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <3849.209.167.16.15.1089124792.squirrel@209.167.16.15> from "Steve Bertrand" at Jul 06, 2004 10:39:52 AM
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>
>
> >> I often have the need to remove hundreds or even thousands of files from
> >> a
> >> single directory (very often). Using rm, I usually get:
> >>
> >> pearl# rm -rvf *
> >> /bin/rm: Argument list too long.
> >>
> >> Is there any way to work around this instead of having to select a small
> >> bunch of files at a time to remove?
> >
> > Not exactly, but find(1) will do the job for you.
> > Typically you would use it with xargs(1).
>
> Thanks to all who replied. This following suggestion worked very, very
> well, and extremely quickly:
>
> > find /path-to-directory -type f -print | xargs rm
>
The find method is right for doing this now and then.
But if you are doing this frequently and there is a reasonable pattern
to the file names you are crating and then deleting, you might want to
create a special directory for them and then when it is time to delete
them, just do an rm -rf on the directory - as in:
mkdir junkdir
fill it up with those files and do whatever you need.
rm -rf junkdir
t might take some thought to categorize the files so the right ones
are stashed in the directory.
////jerry
> I'll read up on find and xargs as this approach appears to be easily
> scripted and cronned.
>
> Tks again!
>
> STeve
>
>
> >
> > You may need to add some options to those commands depending on your
> > situation. For example, if you have embedded whitespace characters in
> > the file names or if you don't want to descend into subdirectories.
> >
>
>
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