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find -exec directories with spaces

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# 1  
Old 03-12-2010
find -exec directories with spaces
All, I have a cleanup script that removes directories and all contents underneath, but I am having issues with directories with spaces.

This is the command I am currently running, how can I get it to work with directories with spaces?

Code:
find /path -mindepth 3 -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;

# 2  
Old 03-12-2010
Strange, I thought that the find exec arguments were not subject to shell word splitting ...

I cannot reproduce:

Code:
$ mkdir a\ b
$ ls -ld a\ b/
drwxr-xr-x+ 1 sysadmin None 0 2010-03-12 19:57 a b/
$ find -depth -name 'a b' -exec rm -r {} \;
$ ls -ld a\ b/
ls: cannot access a b/: No such file or directory

Could you please give more details? Which OS? Could you also copy/paste the command and the output from your terminal?
# 3  
Old 03-12-2010
Running RHEL 5.4
Well, it is finding it, but then it cannot remove because of the space. So, I think the issue is with the remove command and not the find command. May need to pipe it somehow to format it?

Regular find command:
Code:
find /home/chroot/marketing/ -mindepth 3 -type d
/home/chroot/marketing/user/download/Fake Name



Code:
 find /home/chroot/marketing/ -mindepth 3 -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;
find: /home/chroot/marketing/user/download/Fake Name: No such file or directory

# 4  
Old 03-12-2010
Could you try with -depth:

Code:
 find /home/chroot/marketing/ -depth -mindepth 3 -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;

# 5  
Old 03-12-2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by radoulov
Could you try with -depth:

Code:
 find /home/chroot/marketing/ -depth -mindepth 3 -type d -exec rm -rf {} \;


Gave that a try, but get same error. Because there is a space in the Directory the RM command can't find it. It somehow needs a way to escape the space like dir\ dirname
# 6  
Old 03-12-2010
Have you considered using find -print0 | xargs construct?
# 7  
Old 03-12-2010
You can try:

Code:
... -exec rm -rf '{}' \;

... but I still don't think that the problem is the space in the directory name.
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