-original message- Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Any way around "Argument list too long"? From: Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de> Date: 2011-07-18 02:42
>Hi, Grant. > >On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 12:32:42PM -0700, Grant wrote: >> My crontab deletes all files of a certain type in a certain folder >> with yesterday's date in the filename. It usually executes but >> sometimes fails with: > >> /bin/rm: Argument list too long > >> What would you do about this? > >Use xargs - in place of > /bin/rm lots of files ...... > >Use > Lots_of_file_names | xargs rm > >. xargs then calls rm several times with batches of filenames each time. >xargs is a standard Unix command. You'll want to be extra careful with special characters like (space), single quote, and double quote. Better use find ..... -exec rm {} + See: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xargs Rgds, -- FdS Pandu E Poluan ~ IT Optimizer ~ Sent from Nokia E72-1