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by ptspts 350 days ago
This is much safer: xargs -d '\n' rm -f --
2 comments
jcynix 341 days ago
Just tried to use "-d" and learned that it's a GNUism which isn't available under MacOS, so it's not a portable solution. And neither was it available under BSD 4.3 when I learned about xargs the first time.
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jcynix 350 days ago
Sure, but my example was just that and I actually use /identical$/ as the pattern. Sorry for the typo.

And I use this "historic" one liner only when I know about the contents of both directories. As soon as I need a "safer" solution I use a Perl script and pattern matching, as I said.

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poke646 350 days ago
In this case the Perl one-liner would be conceptually identical, the same length, but more performant (no calling out to rm):

   diff -rs a/ b/ | perl -ane '/identical$/ && unlink $F[3]'
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