Re: [vox-tech] Bash scripting newbie - need syntax help

[Dave Margolis]

Bill Kendrick wrote:

Say you had files "deleteme", "metoo" and "imouttahere"

 find . -type f -exec rm {} \;

would cause this to happen:

 rm deleteme
 rm metoo
 rm imouttahere
whereas the xargs method:

 find . -type f | xargs rm

would cause this:

 rm deleteme metoo imouttahere

A bit quicker; less process forking, yada-yada-yada.

great explaination, gracias.  is there ever a chance that the set of 
information piped off to xargs could become too big?

for example:

find . -type f -exec rm {} \;
   rm 1
   rm 2
   ...
   rm 6,000,000
vs.

find . -type f | xargs rm 
[where xargs has to push 6 million things at rm and things get whacky fast]

it seems (but i have no idea) that find would handle this one rm process at a time, and though handling it slower, would struggle though it better than xargs might with one huge data set.

just a thought.  most of my uses of find involve web directories with say 5-60 html files, so i doubt i'd ever create this scenario...



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