Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!motcsd!mark
From: mark@motcsd.UUCP (Mark Jeghers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: cleanup script needed
Message-ID: <275@greek.UUCP>
Date: 7 Mar 89 20:05:47 GMT
References: <15659@oberon.USC.EDU> <9793@smoke.BRL.MIL> <80@torsqnt.UUCP>
Reply-To: mark@greek.UUCP (Mark Jeghers)
Organization: Motorola Computer Systems, Cupertino, CA.
Lines: 21

In article <80@torsqnt.UUCP> david@torsqnt.UUCP (David Haynes) writes:
>In article <9793@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>:In article <15659@oberon.USC.EDU> rkumar@buddha.usc.edu () writes:
>:>Will rm -r *.dvi do the job?
>:
>:No, try	"find . -name '*.dvi' -print | xargs rm".
>:
>Why not, 	"find . -type f -name '*.dvi' -exec rm {} \;" 	?
>
>-david-


Becuase using "-exec rm {}" will invoke a "rm" process for each file found.
"xargs", on the other hand, will assemble as big of an argument list as
possible and invoke ONE "rm" process for that argument list.  "xargs" will
then start on another argument list and repeat the process until all the
file names being piped into it are used up.  This results in *much* fewer
invocations of "rm", and is thus more efficient.

Mark Jeghers
Motorola Computer Systems