Re: rm -r bug in version 4.1, Cygwin on Win2k

[Paul Jarc]

"Adam MacBeth" <address@hidden> wrote:
> I can't make "rm -r" work with Cygwin on Win2K.  When running "rm -r *.obj"
> in a directory without .obj files, I get:
>
> rm: cannot remove `*.obj': No such file or directory
>
> The subdirectories all have .obj files in them, but none of them are
> removed.

You're confused about "*".  Unlike with Windows/DOS, wildcards are
expanded by the shell.  Programs like rm then just operate on the
resulting names; they never see the wildcards.  In a case like this
where there are no files matching the wildcard, it is given to the
program unmodified, but the program still treats it as a plain
filename.

This will do what you want:
find . -name '*.obj' -exec rm '{}' ';'

The "find" command will look through the directory tree for files
matching the given criteria and apply the given action to those files.


paul