Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!ttrdc!levy
From: levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: cleanup script needed
Message-ID: <3256@ttrdc.UUCP>
Date: 10 Mar 89 00:37:31 GMT
References: <15659@oberon.USC.EDU> <9793@smoke.BRL.MIL> <80@torsqnt.UUCP>
Lines: 20

In article <80@torsqnt.UUCP>, david@torsqnt.UUCP (David Haynes) writes:
> :No, try	"find . -name '*.dvi' -print | xargs rm".
> :
> Why not, 	"find . -type f -name '*.dvi' -exec rm {} \;" 	?

Which is better in some ways, since in the first example (using xargs) if rm
finds a *.dvi file without write permission to you or which it otherwise thinks
is unsuitable to be removed, it will say something like

foo/bar.dvi: 444 mode?

and then read a line from stdin.  This will swallow the next filename from
find, which was intended for xargs.  Of course rm -f will omit the check but
also will omit any warning for files you can't remove or that can be removed
but are not writeable by you.
-- 
Daniel R. Levy             UNIX(R) mail:  att!ttbcad!levy
AT&T Bell Laboratories
5555 West Touhy Avenue     Any opinions expressed in the message above are
Skokie, Illinois  60077    mine, and not necessarily AT&T's.