Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:15613 comp.unix.questions:12937
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!isg100!nusdhub!rwhite
From: rwhite@nusdhub.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: unix question: files per directory
Message-ID: <1326@nusdhub.UUCP>
Date: 20 Apr 89 23:19:40 GMT
References: <11445@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: National University, San Diego
Lines: 15

> In article <776@helios.toronto.edu> sysruth@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Ruth Milner) writes:
>>When cleaning up after
>>installing the NAG library, I tried to "rm *" in the source code directory.
>>It refused (I think the error was "too many files").

The shell cant make an argumetn list that long... do the following:

ls | xargs rm

The ls will produce a list of files to standard output and xargs will
repeatedly call it's arguments as a command with as many additional
arguments as it can, taking these additional arguments from it's
standard input...

WALLHAH! rm of a long directory.