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

The rm command has a limitation of files which you can remove simultaneous.

One possibility you can remove them using multiple times the rm command bases on your file patterns, like:

rm -f A*.pdf
rm -f B*.pdf
rm -f C*.pdf
...
rm -f *.pdf

You can also remove them through the find command:

find . -name "*.pdf" -exec rm {} \;