On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, David Brownlee wrote:

> > On Sat, 13 Sep 1997, David Brownlee wrote:
> > 
> > > 	'tar tzf packagefile.gz | xargs rm'
> > > 
> > > 	Will probably still leave directories, but thats fine :)
> > > 
> > 
> > On most UNIX systems that will fail because you will get a command line 
> > way too big (assuming a large number of files, as in the base121). I dont
> > remember trying it on NetBSD but I assume its the same.
> > 
> 	a) NetBSD's command line limits are quite high.
> 
> 	b) xargs handles all that for you.

Indeed. I hadn't used xargs in a while; I should have checked the man 
page. Sorry to all for any confusion caused.

You are also right about rm being called a small number of times since it 
will try to use as many args at a time as possible at each invocation 
until all args are processed.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------
"Because user errors often produce unpredictable results, the user
should try to avoid them."

IBM MVS/XA System Programming Library.