Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@sourceware.cygnus.com; run by ezmlm List-Unsubscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@sourceware.cygnus.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 04:25:45 +1000 From: Fergus Henderson To: Earnie Boyd Cc: Stephane Bonenfant , cygwin users Subject: Re: B20.1: Problem with recursive rm (rm -r) on Windows98 Message-ID: <19990824042544.A31357@murlibobo.cs.mu.OZ.AU> References: <19990820165753.11353.rocketmail@web112.yahoomail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i In-Reply-To: <19990820165753.11353.rocketmail@web112.yahoomail.com>; from Earnie Boyd on Fri, Aug 20, 1999 at 09:57:53AM -0700 On 20-Aug-1999, Earnie Boyd wrote: > --- Stephane Bonenfant wrote: > > My problem is the following: > > > > I have many level of directories with .d files and I want to remove them > > all. So I use the command "rm -rf *.d" which will only remove the file on > > the current directory. I though that it will do all other directories since > > I've use -r option. Is that because my directories are not name ending with > > .d ? Any suggestions > > I think the rm syntax requires that the directories recursed be in the argument > list. Therefore, unless the directory ends in .d it won't be seen. To do what > you want you need to create a foreach loop using find and rm. > > E.G.: > foreach FILE in `find . -name *.d`; do rm -f $FILE; done That command will fail if there are too many files ending in `.d', due to fixed limits on the length of a command line. A more robust (and more concise) alternative is to use find . -name *.d | xargs rm -f -- Fergus Henderson | "I have always known that the pursuit WWW: | of excellence is a lethal habit" PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp. -- Want to unsubscribe from this list? Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com