I have a file that exported a bunch of file names that need to be removed. I need to know how to go about removing each file without having to issue it one at a time at the command line.
I've thought about just cating it inside a for loop, which would probably work, but wanted to know if there was an easier, or even a better solution to doing this.
Thanks.
rm -rf `cat /path/to/filename`
`` characters can be replace with $()
from bash man page:
Command Substitution
Command substitution allows the output of a command to replace the command
name. There are two forms:
$(command)
or
`command`
Bash performs the expansion by executing command and replacing the command
substitution with the standard output of the command, with any trailing
newlines deleted. Embedded newlines are not deleted, but they may be
removed during word splitting. The command substitution $(cat file) can
be replaced by the equivalent but faster $(< file).
When the old-style backquote form of substitution is used, backslash
retains its literal meaning except when followed by $, `, or \. The first
backquote not preceded by a backslash terminates the command substitution.
When using the $(command) form, all characters between the parentheses
make up the command; none are treated specially.
Command substitutions may be nested. To nest when using the backquoted
form, escape the inner backquotes with backslashes.
If the substitution appears within double quotes, word splitting and path‐
name expansion are not performed on the results.
cat /path/to/filename | xargs rm -rf. Its also much easier to read and debug.
Aug 30, 2010 at 12:48
No need for cat or a loop:
xargs -d '\n' -a file.list rm
:%s/\s\+$//e
Mar 22, 2019 at 21:37
$ cat file.list | xargs rm
while read filename ; do rm "$filename" ; done < files.lst
perl -lne 'unlink' files_to_remove.txt
If you need to remove lots of files this is several times faster than xargs + rm, and many many times faster than a shell loop.
Just for the hell of it, just make the file into a script and execute it handles whitespace and most other awkward characters and is simple. Does not spawn more processes than most of the above methods.
sed -ie 's/^/rm -f "/;s/$/"/' <filename>
sh <filename>
sh -c "$(sed -e 's/\(.*\)/rm -f "\1"/' <filename>)" (also showing an alternative sed script).
Aug 28, 2010 at 14:39
Current answers are sufficient - xargs may fail if you have too many files though - in that case you'll need some kind of loop.
Also - when performing this kind of thing it's not a bad idea to , rather than delete, move the files to another folder, so you can manually verify that some weird filenames haven't made some kind of mistake. Then, when you are confident you are okay, just delete the folder.
Not the best one, but it works -:)
cat myfile | awk '{print "rm -rf " $0}' | bash
One more: xargs rm < /path/to/file
(works if you have one filename per line)
