Argument list too long error for rm, cp, mv commands

Question

I have several hundred PDFs under a directory in UNIX. The names of the PDFs are really long (approx. 60 chars).

When I try to delete all PDFs together using the fol

Answer 1

Another answer is to force xargs to process the commands in batches. For instance to delete the files 100 at a time, cd into the directory and run this:

echo *.pdf | xargs -n 100 rm