I want to delete a bunch of unnecessary text files in a pile of NOVA episodes
I have archived. Ok, no problem...
$ cd ~/Movies/NOVA/
$ find . -name '*.txt' | xargs rm
rm: cannot remove `./NOVA': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `-': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `Search': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `For': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `A': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `Safer': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `Cigarette': No such file or directory
Oh that's right, in Unix nobody would ever possibly put a space in a filename
(a hate for later). So I need to separate things with a null byte, ok...
$ find . -print0 -name '*.txt' | xargs -0 rm
Whoopsie, everything's deleted. 10 gigs of fine public educational video,
gone. Turns out putting -print0 first instead of last causes some sort of
crazy find switch boolean madness to short circuit and everything becomes true.
I'm sure there's some perfectly self-consistent, logical and yet still TOTALLY
INSANE reason why this is so making find the well-dressed, but completely off
his rocker guy on the bus trying to convince you to remove the plastic border
>from around your license plate. To save fuel. Because your car will weigh
less. [1]
Makes perfect sense, right?
Hate.
[1] No joke, he had little pamphlets with the math and everything.
--
The interface should be as clean as newly fallen snow and its behavior
as explicit as Japanese eel porn.
