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rm -f *: “Argument List too long”

Tags: Argument List too longfile deletionfindrm -f *

Scenario:

Why?

 “Argument List too long” error occurs when there is a large number of arguments passed to a command.We have come across this issue on delete files using rm command. This is caused because the command can not accept the arguments passed to it in full. There is a limit on the size of arguments passed to a command. The environment variables “ARG_MAX” or “_POSIX_ARG_MAX” defines the argument list.

We can check the limit using “getconf ARG_MAX” or “getconf _POSIX_ARG_MAX”.

Below are the results obtained

$getconf ARG_MAX

2097152

$ getconf _POSIX_ARG_MAX
2097152

This is a kernel limit defined in /usr/include/linux/limits.h.

Please note that the result of getconf ARG_MAX  depends on the stack size and may be different from ARG_MAX in limits.h

Explanation for the issue

The rm -rf */Diorectory command will take all the files in the directory as its arguments. So the command becomes :- “rm -rf file1 file2 file3 … fileN”. The argument list size becomes more than the limit and the error occurs.

Solution:

There are multiple methods to overcome this situation :

1. Find and delete using exec

a. Removes all files in current(.) directory.

 find . -type f -exec rm -fv {} ; 

b. Remove all files and directories in current(.) directory.

Use the switch -rf at your own risk !!!

 find . -depth ! -path . -exec rm -rf {} \; 

Deleting files using embedded delete in find is faster

 find . -type f -delete 

To display the file name being deleted :

 find . -type f -print -delete 

Note: These commands takes too much disk I/O.

2. Using a shell loop(too slow)

 for i in *; do rm -f $i; done 

To display what is being deleted :

 for i in $(echo *); do echo "Deleting : $i"; rm -f $i; 

3. Using Perl to delete files

 perl -e 'for(<*>){((stat)[9]<(unlink))}' 

Category : General, Howtos, Linux, Troubleshooting