filesystem limits

[nmeyers at javalinux.net]

On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 06:46:51PM -0500, Gregory Boyce wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Bill Holt wrote:
> 
> >woops...
> >find . -name '*' | xargs rm
> 
> Wouldn't this end up adding all of the filenames as an argument to rm, 
> hitting the same argument limitation that "rm *" would get?

xargs breaks up the command into multiple commands to keep line length
under control - that's its whole purpose for being. The alternative:

  rm `find . -name '*'`

would do exactly what you describe.

Nathan

> 
> I would normally do:
> 
> find . -name '*' -exec rm {} \;
> 
> It ends up invoking a separate rm for each file which gets around that 
> problem, although it'll probably be slower since it needs to spawn a new 
> process each time.
> 
> --
> Greg
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