On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 12:33:49AM +0200, corerix wrote: > I have a problem with findutils_4.1.20-4 , > find and locate wont work . > the problem existed till 2 weeks . > so the wenn i try to compile a file i get following error > find debian -type d | xargs rmdir -p --ignore-fail-on-non-empty > rmdir: zu wenige Argumente What does that mean ^ ?
It is much easier for people to help with problems if you set your locale back to "C" before reporting bugs, given most of use don't understand German (or whichever language that is). based on an educated guess of what it means, I think it's a problem with rmdir saying "Too many arguments", in which case you should limit the number of arguments xargs passes to it, using the -n option. maybe you can do -n 10, or even -n 1 if rmdir only allows one dir at a time in some cases. Also if you have subdirs your command will get annoyed, in this case: debian +-x +-y | +-bar +-z since find will return x y y/bar z and if you rmdir y before y/bar it will either fail or it will fail when it tries to remove the already gone y/bar. Adding -depth option to find will make it return x y/bar y z which will work fine. Also whoever wrote the code isn't doing things right. They should use find -depth with rmdir without -p, since the -p is only useful because they didn't use -depth and were causing errors. So add -depth to find, and remove -p from rmdir and it should make sense. Then add -n # to xargs if it is still complaining about the number of arguments. Len Sorensen
