On Tue, Jul 06, 2004 at 10:36:06AM +0200, Joerg Johannes wrote:
> Hi everybody
>
> I'd like to delete all symbolic links in a directory. I thought I'm
> smart and use find for that instead of doing it manually. OK. The find
> man page says (snipped):
>
> -type c File is of type c: l symbolic link
>
> So far so good.
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp/$ find . -type l
>
> shows me all symbolic links. Great. Read further:
>
> -exec command ; Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All
> following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command
> until an argument consisting of `;' is encountered. The string `{}'
> is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere it
> occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in arguments where
> it is alone, as in some versions of find. Both of these
> constructions might need to be escaped (with a `\') or quoted to
> protect them from expansion by the shell. The command is executed
> in the starting directory.
>
> This is not so clear anymore. But I think I understand that
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/tmp/$ find . -type l -exec rm {};
>
> should do what I want. But I get an error message saying
>
> find: Missing argument for "-exec".
>
> Huh? Why? I then started quoting the {} and the ; with backslashes and
> ' but without success. So, please, what am I doing wrong?
man pages are subtle! Notice "until an argument of consisting of ';' is
encountered". Arguments are separated by white space. Therefore:
find . -type l -exec rm {} \;
ought to work.
--
Love is sunshine, hate is shadow, Life is checkered shade and sunshine.
-Longfellow (1819-1892)
Rick Pasotto [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.niof.net
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