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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Remove contents of directory, but not directory Post 91628 by blowtorch on Sunday 4th of December 2005 01:25:58 AM
Old 12-04-2005
Quote:
Originally Posted by pdc
It's not homework. I'm looking to know mostly out of curiosity, but you could argue that using wildcards is bad anyway. If there's a million files in the directory, that's a million rm processes (obviously not all simultaneous, but still). It's not bullet-proof:

/*skipped the code*./

On top of that, it's not easy to use from, say, an exec() call. You need the infrastructure of a shell.

So my question stands.
I dont think you have that right.. a million processes is not a million rm processes. Its all those million files as arguments to one rm process. Now that might fail due to too many arguments (any command can handle only a finite number).
I will give you your second argument about not being easy to use from an exec() call.

Why don't you use a slightly modified form of the find command that ppierald gave:
Code:
find . -exec rm -rf {} \;

That, by the way, would be a million rm processes (one for each file/directory that the find command would output).
 

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cd(1)							      General Commands Manual							     cd(1)

NAME
cd - change working directory SYNOPSIS
[directory] DESCRIPTION
If directory is not specified, the value of shell parameter is used as the new working directory. If directory specifies a complete path starting with or directory becomes the new working directory. If neither case applies, tries to find the designated directory relative to one of the paths specified by the shell variable. has the same syntax as, and similar semantics to, the shell variable. must have execute (search) permission in directory. exists only as a shell built-in command because a new process is created whenever a command is executed, making useless if written and pro- cessed as a normal system command. Moreover, different shells provide different implementations of as a built-in utility. Features of as described here may not be supported by all the shells. Refer to individual shell manual entries for differences. If is called in a subshell or a separate utility execution environment such as: (which invokes on accessible directories) does not affect the current directory of the caller's environment. Another usage of as a stand- alone command is to obtain the exit status of the command. EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
International Code Set Support Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported. Environment Variables The following environment variables affect the execution of The name of the home directory, used when no directory operand is specified. A colon-separated list of pathnames that refer to directories. If the directory operand does not begin with a slash character, and the first component is not dot or dot-dot, searches for directory relative to each directory named in the variable, in the order listed. The new working directory is set to the first matching directory found. An empty string in place of a directory pathname represents the current direc- tory. If is not set, it is treated as if it was an empty string. EXAMPLES
Change the current working directory to the directory from any location in the file system: Change to new current working directory residing in the current directory: or Change to directory residing in the current directory's parent directory: Change to the directory whose absolute pathname is Change to the directory relative to home directory: RETURN VALUE
Upon completion, exits with one of the following values: The directory was successfully changed. An error occurred. The working directory remains unchanged. SEE ALSO
csh(1), pwd(1), ksh(1), sh-posix(1), sh(1), chdir(2). STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
cd(1)
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