Re: delete large list of files

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:20:16 -0500
> From: Raleigh Rinehart <address@hidden>
> CC: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>
> 
> > How long is the original full list of files?
> 
> This particular list is 46430 characters (according to wc -c).  So in 
> this case it would seem I cannot directly invoke a single rm.

No, but 2 sub-lists would do.  Perhaps you could find a way of
dividing it into two in some non-arbitrary way.

> The original issue manifested itself several years ago while were still 
> on 3.80.   That is when I originally went to a chunky solution.  I don't 
> recall the lengths of the lists back then but I'm fairly sure they were 
> greater than 8k and less than 32k in length.  Perhaps there was a bug in 
> that version?

Yes, 3.80 did not support Windows too well.

> It worked but wasn't very elegant.  Also, the problem has become more 
> pronounced as we have modified our build system in such a way that the 
> path's are longer

If the leading directories are the problem, then you could chdir to
the directory where the files live, and then the rm's command line
could be made shorter.