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

I only know a way around this. The idea is to export that list of pdf files you have into a file. Then split that file into several parts. Then remove pdf files listed in each part.

ls | grep .pdf > list.txt
wc -l list.txt

wc -l is to count how many line the list.txt contains. When you have the idea of how long it is, you can decide to split it in half, forth or something. Using split -l command For example, split it in 600 lines each.

split -l 600 list.txt

this will create a few file named xaa,xab,xac and so on depends on how you split it. Now to "import" each list in those file into command rm, use this:

rm $(

Sorry for my bad english.