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