Geek Projects - Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP » xargs http://www.geekprojects.org A Linux Sysadmin Sat, 10 Apr 2010 01:42:57 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Bypass rm's “argument list too long” error message with xargs http://www.geekprojects.org/2009/03/bypass-rms-argument-list-too-long-error-message-with-xargs/ http://www.geekprojects.org/2009/03/bypass-rms-argument-list-too-long-error-message-with-xargs/#comments Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:19:30 +0000 admin http://www.geekprojects.org/2009/03/02/bypass-rms-argument-list-too-long-error-message-with-xargs/ When using rm to delete a large number of files, you may come up against a kernel limitation which limits the length of arguments that can be sent to rm:

$ rm *

bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long

This one-liner utilizes xargs to bypass this limitation:

ls | xargs rm

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