Re: arg list too long in unix

Quite true, but ironically enough, the xargs manpage (on my system as well as many others) only has examples using ls to feed xargs. I meant to end the exec param with \+ instead of \; which aggregates a set to operate on. I'm not clear on whether that means one giant set, or several smaller sets, so I suppose it could have the same 'arg list too long' error as ls. I've never had to worry about this issue since I've never had 70,000 files in one directory before!

• Philip
  • Original Message ----- To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com> Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 12:23 PM
• 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.

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