On Tuesday 30 July 2002 09:16, you wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jul 2002, Paul Sladen wrote:
> > The `xargs' program takes the contents of stdin (data `piped' to it) and
> > put them on the command line, eg:
>
> > $ find ./ -name '*.o' | xargs rm
>
> Or you could just make use of the -exec switch to find, which allows
> clever things like:
>
> [root]# find /usr/src/widget/ -name \*.c -exec rm -f {} \; -name \*.o
> -exec mv {} /usr/src/widget-objects/
>
> ...and (this may vary from distro to distro) Paul missed the "-i" and "{}"
> from xargs, too:
>
> $ find ./ -name '*.o' | xargs rm
>
> becomes
>
> $ find ./ -name '*.o' | xargs -i rm {}
>
> and if you want to see what's being done:
>
> $ find ./ -name '*.o' | xargs -i -t rm {}
But you don't want to use the -i option and '{}' if you can help it as it
then run's one rm per file, which negates whole point of xargs(1).
The best way IMHO (print0 to permit \n in filenames) :
find dir -name '*.o' -print0 | xargs -t0 rm -f
When I had problems with some commands in past, little shell scripts to move
arguments about helped. Then mv(1), cp(1) etc got enhanced by some kewl
dude, to have the --target-directory=dir option, thus allowing you to have a
file list at _end_ of the line, and not have to prat about with -i and '{}'.
Rob
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