[CentOS] The directory that I am trying to clean up is huge

[Alexander Dalloz]

Am 23.01.2010 14:12, schrieb Kevin Krieser:
> 
> On Jan 23, 2010, at 6:45 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 23 Jan 2010, Marcelo M. Garcia wrote:
>>
>>> Robert Heller wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> -bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long
>>>>
>>>> 'man xargs'
>>>>
>>>> find <mumble> -print | xargs rm
>>>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Just curious. What is the difference between the command above and "find
>>> <numble> -exec rm -f {} \;" ?
>>
>>  the find ... -exec variation will invoke a new "rm" command for
>> every single file it finds, which will simply take more time to run.
>> beyond that, the effect should be the same.
> 
> 
> Unless there are files or directories with spaces in them, in which case the xargs variant can fail.

find on CentOS 5.4 supports

find <path> -exec {} +;

which avoids the negative effect of spawning new subprocesses when using
"-exec {} \;"

find on CentOS 4.8 does not support that.

> It is likely the original poster either did
> find * ...
> or find . -name *
> and the bash shell still expanded the arguments.  He was on the right track using the find command, but it wasn't used right.

Alexander