UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

For starters please post the script and mention what Operating System and Shell you have.

At a guess your script generates a command which is too long for the Operating System.

Bearing in mind that we know nothing about your Operating System or Shell, the generic solution format is something like this (in ksh) where the criteria is to delete files more than 180 days old :

Code:

find /cullable_tree/ -type f -mtime +180 -print | while read FILENAME
do
     if [ -f "${FILENAME}" ]
     then
              echo "${FILENAME}"
              # rm "${FILENAME}"
              # (Uncomment when tested thoroughly)
     fi
done

The "if -f" covers circumstances where the filename contains weird characters.

This sort of construct never generates long command lines and may not be fast but it gets there in the end.