Re: [gentoo-user] Any way around "Argument list too long"?

[Grant]

>> ran this and the output was voluminous but looked good:
>>
>> /usr/bin/find /home/user -type f -name "*-`/bin/date -d 'yesterday'
>> +\%Y\%m\%d`*.jpg"
>>
>> So I ran it again, adding -delete right before -type.  After a lot of
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> That was a mistake.
>
>> processing I got a line of output like this for each file:
>>
>> /usr/bin/find: `/home/user/1-2011071612345.jpg': No such file or
>> directory
>>
>> Unfortunately the command actually deleted the entire /home/user
>> folder.  Can anyone tell me what went wrong?  Maybe '/home/user' was
>> at the very top of the long list that scrolled up the screen when I
>> ran the find command without -delete?
>>
> Well this is an unfortunate way to learn how find works.  A better way
> would be:
>
> $ man find
>
> Basically find works of a chain of selection criteria.  It crawls all
> the files/dirs and when one item in the chain is true for the criteria,
> it checks for the other.  For example
>
> $ find /path -type f -name blah -print
>
> Crawls /path, for each file/dir it checks if it is a regular file (-type
> f), if that is true, it checks if it's name is "blah", if that is true,
> it prints the name (blah).
>
> Therefore,
>
> $ find /path -delete -type f -name ....
>
> Crawls path, then checks "-delete".. but wait, -delete evaluates to
> "true if removal succeeded" (find(1)), so it deletes the file, then
> checks to see if it is a regular file, then if that is true then it
> checks the name... but all that doesn't matter because your files are
> deleted.
>
> You should never put -delete at the beginning of a chain and, arguably,
> you shouldn't use -delete at all.  It even says in the man page:
>
>        Warnings:  Don't  forget that the find command line is evaluated
>        as an expression, so putting -delete first will make find try to
>        delete everything below the starting points you specified.  When
>        testing a find command line that you later intend  to  use  with
>        -delete,  you should explicitly specify -depth in order to avoid
>        later surprises.  Because -delete  implies  -depth,  you  cannot
>        usefully use -prune and -delete together.

Alright, find is tricky.  Is this the right spot for -delete?

/usr/bin/find /home/user -type f -name "*-`/bin/date -d 'yesterday'
+\%Y\%m\%d`*.jpg" - delete

- Grant