Deleting a Directory Full of Files

Published: 2007-10-03

I recently had a problem with 'rm ./*' returning the error '/bin/rm: Argument list too long'. The problem had previously popped up when removing the contents of a large cache directory and again when deleting a large mail spool. The work around is to pipe a find command into a rm. The following command will empty the directory you are in of all .jpgs.

find . -name '*.jpg' | xargs rm

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