Kevin Shackleton wrote:
I have a directory tree with a lot of duplicate "leaves".
The command "rm -r <junkfile>" does not work, saying:
"cannot lstat '<junkfile>'"
I even seeded the root of this tree with one of these files but still
the rm command did not recurse.
I know the command "rm -rf *" would get rid of these files with
colateral damage.
What am I missing please?
man rm
This will tell you that the -r flag is for recursively
removing directories, not files:
-r, -R, --recursive
remove directories and their contents recursively
Might I suggest using find + rm , ie.
find . -name "<junkfile>" -exec rm {} \;
cheers
rickw
p.s. I know what you mean by the vague concept of "seeding". For
many of the GNU shell utilities it would be nice to be able to
specify that -r is to work recursively on the file/pattern specified
as the argument(s), i.e.
ls -R <somefile>
currently will not list <somefile> unless it is a directory.
I guess that what "find" is for :)
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Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services
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