Summary:Deleting files with strange names

Hi ,
  Thanks to all those who replied.Special thanks to Dave Mitchell who provided the solution first.The solution by Jeff Woolsey also works,thanks for reply.

Sanjeev

Original Problem:

> Hi,
>   I am trying to delete files with strange names like quotes ,spaces or backslashes.
> 
> find /dir -name '*.inactive' -print | xargs rm
> 
> This command fails when xargs encounters a control character or a quote.



Solution from Dave Mitchell:

If you have Perl installed, the following should do the trick (as long as
the filename doesnt have a \n it it).

    find . -name '*.inactive' -print | perl -ne 'chomp; unlink'

or if you want error reportting too:

    find . -name '*.inactive' -print | \
	perl -ne 'chomp; unlink or warn "Failed to delete $_: $!\n"'

Solution from Jeff Woolsey:

That's a problem with xargs.  The interface does leave a little to be desired,
though it's better than the shell ( rm *.inactive  with special characters).

Try  find2perl  with the same arguments (not the pipe, though), and edit the
resulting perl code to do what you want.

Or use somethig like this:

#! /usr/local/bin/perl

###     xargs rm without the globbing.
#
#       Hmm.  It's not this simple.

@_ = <>;
chop(@_);
unlink @_;
exit 0;




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