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find
This command will search the indicated directory (and subdirectories within). The syntax defines a search for files and soft links.-P
This option restricts the search within the indicated directory tree and forces NO dereference of symbolic links. This warranties that the find command will not look for files within the links../processor0
This argument is the directory on which the search (and deletion) will be performed.-type f -o -type l
These options indicate that the find command will search for anything that is a file (-type f
) or (-o
) a soft link (-type l
, this is the lower letterl
). As indicated with the-P
option above, the links are not followed, so only the links will be removed but the object to where they linked are not.-print0
This option indicates the format of the result of the "find
" command. This particular format is able to catch strange file names, and ensures that they are readable for the following command (xargs
) which has been concatenated with the pipe. Note that two-print0
indications are needed, one per "side" of the "or" option indicated above.The pipe command ( represented by a sinngle pipe line:
|
)
This command concatenates two commands. This makes the output of the previous command(find
) to serve as input to the following command (xargs
).xargs -0
xargs
will then convert the received list of files, line by line, into an argument for whatever command is specified to it (munlink
in this case). The-0
flag is related to the format of the listed files; if you use-print0
in thefind
command you must use-0
in thexargs
command.munlink
This command deletes each file and soft link in the list without overloading the metadata server. In this case, the list is the one received byxargs
.
II. Second step is to : remove the empty directories and subdirectories in the tree. Once all of the files and soft links are deleted, you can remove the empty directories with a similar command:
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