01-28-2009
the -prune option prevents find from walking a subdirectory underneath it's current location. Without prune, you might print a listing as follows:
file1
file2
dir1
dir1/file1
dir1/file2
file3
file4
With prune you would print a listing like this:
file1
file2
dir1
file3
file4
When the command is piped into xargs followed by another command like the 'rm' in your example xargs acts as like a loop for the input coming from the pipe and runs the command (rm -f ) for each line of input.
The directory wont be removed by rm -f but the error will be sent to /dev/null so the user wont see this. The effect is that the files will be removed but not the directories, nor the files in the directories.
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mv(1) General Commands Manual mv(1)
Name
mv - move or rename files
Syntax
mv [-i] [-f] [-] file1 file2
mv [-i] [-f] [-] file... directory
Description
The command moves (changes the name of) file1 to file2.
If file2 already exists, it is removed before file1 is moved. If file2 has a mode which forbids writing, prints the mode and reads the
standard input to obtain a line. If the line begins with y, the move takes place. If it does not, exits. For further information, see
In the second form, one or more files (plain files or directories) are moved to the directory with their original file-names.
The command refuses to move a file onto itself.
Options
- Interprets all following arguments as file names to allow file names starting with a minus.
-f Force. This option overrides any mode restrictions or the -i switch.
-i Interactive mode. If a move is to supersede an existing file, the system prompts youw with the name of the file fol-
lowed by a question mark. If you type a string that begins with y, the move occurs. If you type any other response,
the move does not occur.
Restrictions
If file1 and file2 lie on different file systems, must copy the file and delete the original. In this case the owner name becomes that of
the copying process and any linking relationship with other files is lost.
See Also
cp(1), ln(1)
mv(1)