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Full Discussion: Delete large number of files
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Delete large number of files Post 302515740 by inakajin on Wednesday 20th of April 2011 06:46:48 PM
Old 04-20-2011
Delete large number of files
Hi. I need to delete a large number of files listed in a txt file. There are over 90000 files in the list. Some of the directory names and some of the file names do have spaces in them.

In the file, each line is a full path to a file:
/path/to/the files/file1
/path/to/some other/files/file 2

I have a couple questions.

1. To remedy the spaces in the directory and file names I added " to the beginning and end of each line.
The file now looks like this:
"/path/to/the files/file1"
"/path/to/some other/files/file 2"

Would this solve the problem of the spaces in the file and directory names? Would single quotes be preferable?

2.
Code:
xargs rm -f < listoffiles.txt

xargs is a command I am familiar with. Would the number of files (90000+) cause an issue using xargs?

If so, would a do loop of kind overcome that? I saw the code below posted on another thread here. Could this be executed from the shell directly or would it need to be wrapped in a script?
Code:
while read file; do rm "$file"; done < listoffiles.txt

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
 

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LEARN ABOUT HPUX

whereis

whereis(1)						      General Commands Manual							whereis(1)

NAME

       whereis - locate source, binary, and/or manual for program

SYNOPSIS

       dir... name...

DESCRIPTION

       locates	source,  binary,  and manuals sections for specified files.  The supplied names are first stripped of leading path name components
       and any (single) trailing extension of the form (such as Prefixes of resulting from use of SCCS are also  dealt	with.	then  attempts	to
       locate the desired program in a list of standard places.

   Options
       recognizes the following command-line options:

	      Limit search to binary files.
			     Can be used in conjunction with or

	      Limit search to source-code files.
			     Can be used in conjunction with or

	      Limit search to manual entry files.
			     Can be used in conjunction with or

	      Search for unusual entries.
			     A file is said to be unusual if it does not have one entry of each requested type.  Thus, searches for those files in
			     the current directory that have no corresponding manual entry.

	      Limit search to binaries located in one or more specified directories.
			     Can be used in conjunction with or

	      Limit search to source files located in one or more specified directories.
			     Can be used in conjunction with or

	      Limit search to manual entry files
			     located in one or more specified directories.  Can be used in conjunction with or

	      Terminates the last directory list
			     or options) and identifies the start of file names.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

   International Code Set Support
       Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.

EXAMPLES

       Find all the files in that are not documented in with source files in

WARNINGS

       uses the system call (see chdir(2)) to run faster.  Therefore, path names given with the and options must be absolute path names.

AUTHOR

       was developed by the University of California, Berkeley.

FILES

																	whereis(1)
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