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From: kimcm@diku.dk (Kim Christian Madsen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: Can U pipe filenames to rm???
Message-ID: <1990Oct2.070835.1900@diku.dk>
Date: 2 Oct 90 07:08:35 GMT
References: <28790001@col.hp.com> <1990Sep29.001151.11544@diku.dk> <0K46FZB@xds13.ferranti.com>
Organization: Department Of Computer Science, University Of Copenhagen
Lines: 22

peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:

>In article <1990Sep29.001151.11544@diku.dk> I wrote:
>> If you're sure the output of the ninstall does not exceed the limit of
>> what the shell you're using can handle...

>> 	ninstall .... | xargs rm

>> However, if the filelist from ninstall et al. does exceed the shell buffer...

>	ninstall .... | xargs rm

>xargs will split the commandline into chunks the shell will handle.

Sorry for the misunderstanding that I confused by saying that xargs is
limited by the shell buffer size... However, I have run across a version
of xargs that exactly does what it isn't supposed to do: take stdin in one
chunk and if it doesn't fit -- too bad.... And that's what triggered my
response, however the I suppose the remaining 99% of xargs will do the 
job nicely.

						Kim Chr. Madsen