Re: [gentoo-user] xargs and rm funkiness

[Daniel D Jones]

On Friday 21 May 2010 22:11:49 covici@××××××××××.com wrote:
> Daniel D Jones <ddjones@××××××××××××.org> wrote:
> > Running the command:
> >
> > find -name *.ext | xargs -0 rm
> >
> > I get the result:
> >
> > rm: cannot remove `Long File Name One.ext\nLong File Name Two.ext\nLong
> > File Name Three.ext\n': File name too long.
> >
> > (The actual list is much longer than this, of course, or I wouldn't be
> > using xargs.)  For some reason, the \n isn't being recognized as a
> > separator but rather as a part of a single long file name.  Don't think
> > $IFS would affect a command like rm but it doesn't appear to be the
> > issue:
> >
> > ddjones@merlin ~ $ set | grep IFS
> > IFS=$' \t\n'
> >
> > I don't see any other ser variable which looks like a likely candidate to
> > cause the behavior.  Anyone have a clue what's going on?
>
> Why do you have -0 -- this replaces the \n's with a null character -- is
> that what you want?

Not exactly.  It doesn't replace anything.  It tells xargs to look for a null 
to separate fields and to ignore the normal field separation characters.  This 
is required if you have spaces in the field name, otherwise xargs sees the 
spaces as a field separator.

xargs was doing exactly what I told it to do.  Unfortunately, I didn't read 
the man pages and was relying on some poorly written web pages which indicated 
that -0 told xargs to skip spaces but didn't mention that it also told it to 
ignore \n.  

The solution, as Patrick Holthaus pointed out, was to use the -print0 argument 
with find, which instructs find to use the null character as a field separator in 
its output.

-- 
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." - William Blake