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Date:      Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:08:10 +0200
From:      CK <ruletko@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: 'rm' Can not delete files
Message-ID:  <4F31A0CA.3080607@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <1237723287.20120207235924@yandex.ru>
References:  <1237723287.20120207235924@yandex.ru>

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Êîíüêîâ Åâãåíèé wrote:
> # rm *
> /bin/rm: Argument list too long.
>
>
> in this directory about 25000 files,
> but actually there is only one argument to rm it is '*' sign.
>
> Why rm get list of all files in directore instead of deleting one by one?

Short answer: this is not Windows.

Long answer: shell does wildcard expands, therefore rm gets about 25000 
arguments of expanded '*'. Try

find ./ -type f -delete

Thanks,
CK



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