when I try to run rm on multiple files I have problem to delete files with space

umen · #1 (**permalink**) 09-20-2005

Hello
when I try to run rm on multiple files I have problem to delete files with space.
I have this command :
find . –name "*.cmd" | xargs \rm –f

it doing the work fine but when it comes across files with spaces like : "my foo file.cmd"
it refuse to delete it
why?

blowtorch · #2 (**permalink**) 09-20-2005

In this case when rm encounters a filename such as "my foo file.cmd", the space seperated words in the file will be treated as different files. So rm will try to remove files named "my", "foo", and "file.cmd", which it will not find.

A workaround for this will be:

Code:

find . -name "*.cmd" -exec rm {} \;

This will spawn as many 'rm' processes as there are files, but it will get the job done.

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