The Problem
While trying to list or interact with large number of files from command line it results with following error:
$ ls -l *.xml | wc -l bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long 0
$ rm *.xml bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long
or when trying to delete large number of files using find command it fails with below error message:
$ find /u01/oracle/apps/fs1/EBSapps/appl/xdo/12.0.0/temp/*.xml -mtime +120 -exec rm -v {} \;
bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long The Solution
There is a large but finite limit to command line imposed by the kernel and the errors shown above indicates that limit has reached.
To workaround this, xargs can be used which accepts a list of file names from its standard input and runs command on them. You can use ‘find’ in combination with ‘xargs’ as below:
# find . -type f -name '*.xml' | xargs rm
NOTE: The above command will delete all the files with a .xml extension in the current directory without any confirmation. I would recommend you to first take backup of necessary files before executing. It is always good to verify on a test machine and check before proceeding on the production machine.