use of xargs and prune piping with find command.


 
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# 1  
Old 01-28-2009
use of xargs and prune piping with find command.

Can anyone interpret and tell me the way the below command works?

find * -name "[0-9]*${msgType}" -mtime +${archiveDays} -prune -type f -print 2>/dev/null | xargs rm -f 2> /dev/null

Please tell me the usage of prune and xargs in the above command?

Looking forward your reply.

Thanks in advance.
# 2  
Old 01-28-2009
the -prune option prevents find from walking a subdirectory underneath it's current location. Without prune, you might print a listing as follows:

file1
file2
dir1
dir1/file1
dir1/file2
file3
file4

With prune you would print a listing like this:

file1
file2
dir1
file3
file4

When the command is piped into xargs followed by another command like the 'rm' in your example xargs acts as like a loop for the input coming from the pipe and runs the command (rm -f ) for each line of input.

The directory wont be removed by rm -f but the error will be sent to /dev/null so the user wont see this. The effect is that the files will be removed but not the directories, nor the files in the directories.
 
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