[NTLUG:Discuss] Removing lots of Files - help.

[kbrannen@gte.net]

Pervaz Allaudin wrote:
> Pardom my ignorance - but would not
> 
> rm -rfv *.*~
> 
> also work just as well or would it necessarily be too dangerous.

In addition to Fred's "." comment, this would remove directories, the other 
command wouldn't (as it didn't have "-r").  Also, this doesn't recurse into 
dirs to find the files, while "find" does.  rm's recursion and find's 
recursion are different:

* rm's is remove recursively while searching only in the current dir (with 
that pattern),
* find's is search recurively for things that match (no matter how deep in dirs).

If this is still unclear, I'd suggest making a temp dir and putting some dirs 
(at least 3 levels deep) and files into them (at each of the levels), and then 
try each command to get a better feel for what each does.  (Hint:  be sure you 
run the find command (without the "xargs rm") first, unless you have a script 
to auto-create your temp dirs/files. :-)

HTH,
Kevin