Grep and xargs: File name too log

Question

I'm trying to delete all the files that do not start with __. This

ls | grep -v "__" | xargs -0 rm

Yields : File name too long. Any help?

EDIT:

ls | grep -v "__" | awk '{print("rm \42"$0"\42")}' | /bin/bash

solves the problem, but I'd like to know why the first is not correct. Thanks

Answer 1

Take out the -0 argument and it will fix this problem. the -0 arg to xargs says that the items in the input list are null terminated. You aren't doing that, you are passing lines terminated by an \n character.