John Bernard Abella [blog] » rm command http://www.johnbernardabella.com A System Admin's Notebook, A Progrmmers Journal Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:27:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Alternative for rm command http://www.johnbernardabella.com/alternative-for-rm-command/ http://www.johnbernardabella.com/alternative-for-rm-command/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:07:17 +0000 jba_21 http://www.johnbernardabella.com/2008/02/03/alternative-for-rm-command/ Ive been handling webserver with more than 1000 website and lots of unique visitors per month. Session are stored on the server hard drive and every end of the month i need to clean it up.

Now i was puzzled by rm command.
rm -f *

in /tmp/ directory. The terminal choked and gave out:

-bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long

Apparently there are a maximum number of files that can be passed to rm.

ls -1 | grep sess | wc -l

382611

wow 382611 session files! image how long it would take if you have an application that running with sessions.
The solution for this problem would be :

find . -name 'sess*' | xargs rm

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