使用 find 和 xargs 删除带有 rm 的文件

Question

When I do

rm file.txt

or

rm *.txt

I'm prompted for each file, since I didn't specify the -f option to rm .

But when I do this:

find . -type f -name '*.txt' | xargs rm

the files are removed without the confirmation.

What is the logics behind this? Is it possible to find the reason in some documentation? I cannot explain why this would be the case.

Answer 1

You have an alias set for the rm command to 'rm -i'. Therefore if you invoke the command directly as in

rm file.txt

or

rm *.txt

the alias will be expanded. If you will call it with xargs as in

find . -type f -name '*.txt' | xargs rm

The rm is passed as a simple string argument to xargs and is later invoked by xargs without alias substitution of the shell. You alias is probably defined in ~/.bashrc, in case you want to remove it.

Answer 2

根据您的 xargs 版本，您可能可以使用 --no-run-if-empty GNU 扩展选项：

find . -type f -name '*.txt' | xargs  --no-run-if-empty  rm -rf

Answer 3

你可以使用这个简单的命令来解决你的问题

find . --type f -name '*.txt' -delete