On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 08:35:15PM -0500, RGH wrote: > Gordon Messmer wrote: >> Dave Ihnat wrote: >>> On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 04:10:50PM -0500, RGH wrote: >>>> ls -1d *log | xargs rm -Rf >>>> Note that the first option is a one, not an el. >>> >>> Or for that matter, just "echo *log" instead of ls. >> >> Neither of those are reliable. If there are enough matches to require >> xargs, then both ls and echo will fail. xargs also doesn't care >> whether or not each entry is printed on its own line, so "ls -1" isn't >> better than "ls" with no argument. >> > It is better, because "ls -1" doesn't print all the junk. This wasn't > meant to deal with the spaces-in-filenames problem. The IFS reset I > mentioned in another post is what's needed to deal with that, isn't it? > Combined with `ls -1` of course. One important tool is: find dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 somecommand The -print0 and -0 pair are key. I find myself using it for the most simple searches for the simple reason that WindowZ users are always adding spaces and other unix shell meta characters like ""')(*&^%$#@!~`=';:"?/><,." to their file names and for me this includes Music titles... Also the 'type -f' is interesting in this discussion because the OP did not specify if dirs or files were interesting. Find also has date tools that I use a lot to find out what fiddles with what. touch /tmp/now /usr/sbin/*configure*something find / -type f -newer /tmp/now -print There are good reasons that the -1 flag exists for 'ls' and yes there are reasons that 'xargs' exists too. -- T o m M i t c h e l l Found me a new hat, now what? -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines