Shell Scripting: Using bash with xargs

Question

I'm trying to write a bash command that will delete all files matching a specific pattern - in this case, it's all of the old vmware log files that have built up.

I've tried this command:

find . -name vmware-*.log | xargs rm

However, when I run the command, it chokes up on all of the folders that have spaces in their names. Is there a way to format the file path so that xargs passes it to rm quoted or properly escaped?

Answer 1

Try using:

find . -name vmware-*.log -print0 | xargs -0 rm

This causes find to output a null character after each filename and tells xargs to break up names based on null characters instead of whitespace or other tokens.

Answer 2

Do not use xargs. Find can do it without any help:

find . -name "vmware-*.log" -exec rm '{}' \;

Answer 3

Check out the -0 flag for xargs; combined with find's -print0 you should be set.

find . -name vmware-*.log -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Answer 4

GNU find

find . -name vmware-*.log -delete

Answer 5

find . -name vmware-*.log | xargs -i rm -rf {}

Answer 6

find -iname pattern

use -iname for pattern search

Answer 7

To avoid space issue in xargs I'd use new line character as separator with -d option:

find . -name vmware-*.log | xargs -d '\n' rm