[Novalug] what to do with really large directories (was: How to get the number of files)

[jlg]

xargs is your friend here - tcl might be a bit painful.  The reference below has a file delete example:

    http://sidvind.com/wiki/Xargs_by_example

...jlg

Nino Pereira <pereira at speakeasy.net> wrote: Clif,

you say quite rightly:

>   I find that a lot of the "normal" tools fail when I need to work with
> directories that have huge numbers of files in them.
> 
>   My usual solution then is to start an interactive Tcl shell...

which for you, as an expert Tcler (this must be a word, it sounds good,
right?), is not a problem. But, writing Tclcode is not a solution for
the rest of us.

What helps on occasion is to restrict the range of the files. To delete 
all files in a large and useless directory (as I had to do recently),
the usual command

'rm *' failed, with a message 'too many files'. What did work was

'rm a*', and then
'rm b*', etc,
on occasion trying whether the number of files had shrunk enough for
'rm *' to work.

Is there a switch, or a .conf file, that sets the limits on the
amount of files a command like 'rm' can deal with? If so, where is it?

Nino

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