👀 Views: 42 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-17

bash find xargs

I've hit a wall trying to I'm working with an 'Argument list too long' behavior when trying to delete a large number of files using a combination of `find` and `xargs` in my Bash script. The goal is to find and remove all `.tmp` files in a specific directory structure. Here’s the relevant portion of my script: ```bash #!/bin/bash TARGET_DIR='/path/to/directory' find "$TARGET_DIR" -type f -name '*.tmp' -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f ``` I've checked the `TARGET_DIR`, and it contains a substantial number of `.tmp` files, more than what I anticipated. When I run this script, I receive the following behavior message: ``` find: Argument list too long ``` To troubleshoot, I tried breaking down the command using a loop instead of `xargs`: ```bash find "$TARGET_DIR" -type f -name '*.tmp' -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do rm -f "$file" done ``` However, this method is much slower, and I need a more efficient way to handle the file deletions without hitting this limit. I also looked into using `-exec` with `find`, but I’m worried about performance since it runs the `rm` command for each file individually: ```bash find "$TARGET_DIR" -type f -name '*.tmp' -exec rm -f {} + ``` Could anyone suggest a more efficient way to manage this scenario, or is there a way to increase the argument list limit? I’m currently using Bash 5.1 on Ubuntu 20.04. Any help would be greatly appreciated! For context: I'm using Bash on Linux. Thanks for any help you can provide!