Re: arg list too long in unix

• Philip Douglass <philipd_at_sirs.com>

> I'm not sure xargs will work -- it seems to me that since xargs is
> typically invoked as: 'ls cz* | xargs rm', Nuno is likely to get the same
> arg list too long error. I think the best way to delete the files would
> be: 'find . -name cz\* -exec rm -f {} \;'

Anyone who invokes xargs from "ls *" needs to learn how to use xargs: feed it with things that ae not affected by the arg list. For example:

    find . -type f -name 'cz*' | xargs rm -f;

is one nice way: the '*' is not expanded on the command line but used with an internal glob call in find.

Other problem with using ls for large file op's is that it attempts to sort the output, which is expensive and a memory hog. Find simply spits out matching files as they are found.

--
Steven Lembark                               2930 W. Palmer
Workhorse Computing                       Chicago, IL 60647
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Author: Steven Lembark
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