This is the mail archive of the cygwin mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: bash: /usr/bin/rm: Argument list too long


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

According to Morten Kjarulff on 8/22/2005 6:56 AM:
> Hi,
> 
> If I try to rm many files, or fewer files with long names I get "bash:
> /usr/bin/rm: Argument list too long". Can anyone tell the limits?

The limits are pretty low if you are using Windows mechanisms, although I
don't know the exact limit (they can be increased by mounting /bin as
cygwin-executable, but even then still have limits).  But generally, if
you are trying to pass that much data on the command line, there is
usually a better solution that does not even expand the wildcard.

> 
> Is the solution something like "for file in * ; do rm $file ; done"?

It is, if you don't mind doing it one file at a time.

If you don't mind deleting the directory, there is always this (let rm do
the recursion, instead of calling out every file yourself):
cd .. && rm -R tmp

Or if you want to delete as fast as possible without surpassing
command-line limits, there is this (it works, since echo is a shell
builtin, and since xargs is getting the list from stdin and not the
command line, then calling rm as many times as needed with a group of
filenames as command-line arguments):
echo * | xargs rm

By the way, this is not a cygwin-specific problem, it is just that cygwin
tends to have a smaller command-line limit than many other platforms.

> 
> same thing for ls:
> mkj008@mcmkj01w /tmp
> $ ls *

See the coreutils FAQ - 'ls' is MUCH more efficient than 'ls *', and does
the SAME THING!

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/coreutils-faq.html#Argument-list-too-long

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             ebb9@byu.net
volunteer cygwin coreutils maintainer
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Cygwin)
Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDCdAm84KuGfSFAYARAnHtAJ9x3fynt113ri0ZYSFxmLkrYKT4rwCfffhs
zLXtaL1CGL4Yu3aekRGYH14=
=b+Y1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]