UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am trying to delete files older than 60 days from a folder:

find /myfolder/*.dat -mtime +60 -exec rm {} \;

ERROR - argument list too long: find

I can't just give the folder name, as there are some files that I don't want to delete. So i need to give with the pattern (*.dat). I can write a script with AWK to take the time and do a delete. But i need to do for many folder and feel it will take time.

Normally for argument list too long: find, I have used XARGS. But I am not sure how XARGS and FIND can be used together. Please help me.

Thanks,
Risshanth

Hi.

Did you try

Code:

find /myfolder/*.dat -mtime +60 | xargs rm

find /myfolder/*.dat -mtime +60 | xargs rm

Using xargs like that is dangerous. See why xargs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you have GNU Parallel GNU Parallel - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation installed you may be able to:

find /myfolder -name '*.dat' -mtime +60 -print0 | parallel -0X rm

Watch the intro video to GNU Parallel at YouTube - Part 1: GNU Parallel script processing and execution

The reason it says "argument list too long" is because the argument list is too long. You're not going to solve this by cramming the arguments into find instead of rm -- its argument limit is no bigger than rm's! The solution to "too many arguments" is to not use too many arguments. Just give find the directory and it is capable of finding the files itself -- after all, it is "find".

Here's a safer solution with xargs instead of parallel:

Code:

find /myfolder -name '*.dat' -mtime +60 -print0 | xargs --null rm