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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:40:44 -0700
Message-ID: <CAN0CFw3RHECcBJZbOw_2fs2X0on9h5mDefLiD41c7Kr_12cP7w@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Any way around "Argument list too long"?
From: Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
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>> ran this and the output was voluminous but looked good:
>>
>> /usr/bin/find /home/user -type f -name "*-`/bin/date -d 'yesterday'
>> +\%Y\%m\%d`*.jpg"
>>
>> So I ran it again, adding -delete right before -type. =A0After a lot of
> =A0^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> That was a mistake.
>
>> processing I got a line of output like this for each file:
>>
>> /usr/bin/find: `/home/user/1-2011071612345.jpg': No such file or
>> directory
>>
>> Unfortunately the command actually deleted the entire /home/user
>> folder. =A0Can anyone tell me what went wrong? =A0Maybe '/home/user' was
>> at the very top of the long list that scrolled up the screen when I
>> ran the find command without -delete?
>>
> Well this is an unfortunate way to learn how find works. =A0A better way
> would be:
>
> $ man find
>
> Basically find works of a chain of selection criteria. =A0It crawls all
> the files/dirs and when one item in the chain is true for the criteria,
> it checks for the other. =A0For example
>
> $ find /path -type f -name blah -print
>
> Crawls /path, for each file/dir it checks if it is a regular file (-type
> f), if that is true, it checks if it's name is "blah", if that is true,
> it prints the name (blah).
>
> Therefore,
>
> $ find /path -delete -type f -name ....
>
> Crawls path, then checks "-delete".. but wait, -delete evaluates to
> "true if removal succeeded" (find(1)), so it deletes the file, then
> checks to see if it is a regular file, then if that is true then it
> checks the name... but all that doesn't matter because your files are
> deleted.
>
> You should never put -delete at the beginning of a chain and, arguably,
> you shouldn't use -delete at all. =A0It even says in the man page:
>
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0Warnings: =A0Don't =A0forget that the find command line is=
evaluated
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0as an expression, so putting -delete first will make find =
try to
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0delete everything below the starting points you specified.=
=A0When
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0testing a find command line that you later intend =A0to =
=A0use =A0with
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0-delete, =A0you should explicitly specify -depth in order =
to avoid
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0later surprises. =A0Because -delete =A0implies =A0-depth, =
=A0you =A0cannot
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0usefully use -prune and -delete together.
Alright, find is tricky. Is this the right spot for -delete?
/usr/bin/find /home/user -type f -name "*-`/bin/date -d 'yesterday'
+\%Y\%m\%d`*.jpg" - delete
- Grant