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pistacchio
Asked: 2012-01-28 03:10:09 +0800 CST

Grep and xargs: File name too long

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I'm trying to delete all the files that do not start with __. This

ls | grep -v "__" | xargs -0 rm

Yields : File name too long. Any help?

EDIT:

ls | grep -v "__" | awk '{print("rm \42"$0"\42")}' | /bin/bash

solves the problem, but I'd like to know why the first is not correct. Thanks

linux bash

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Take out the -0 argument and it will fix this problem. the -0 arg to xargs says that the items in the input list are null terminated. You aren't doing that, you are passing lines terminated by an \n character.

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