On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 08:51:06PM -0700, Nicholas Leippe wrote:
> On Tuesday 08 March 2005 07:34 pm, Doran Barton wrote:
> > So what about 'find stuff -exec rm {} \;'?
>
> Should work. Performance-wise, I believe find exec()'s an rm for each item
> it
> finds, so similar to xargs. It should, however, save at least one invocation
> of the shell.The -exec invokes a shell and rm for each file found. Piping through xargs, as we were doing earlier, invokes a shell for xargs, and a shell and rm for each time rm is invoked. Since rm is invoked with multiple arguments (try it with '| xargs echo' to see what it does), it is invoked fewer times, so should be much more efficient. The number of times rm is invoked is a function of the maximum command line length divided by the typical file path length. Researching the maximum command line length will be left as an exercise for the student. -- Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ / Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com / \ No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB
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