Removing files interactively with find and xargs

rm, shell, xargs

Solution

Can someone explain to me what's exactly is happening,

As the man page for xargs says (under the `-a` option): "If you use this option, stdin remains unchanged when commands are run. Otherwise, stdin is redirected from /dev/null."

Since you're not using the `-a` option, each `rm -i` command that `xargs` is running gets its stdin from /dev/null (i.e. no input is available). When `rm` asks whether to remove a particular file, the answer is effectively "no" because /dev/null gives no reply. `rm` receives an EOF on its input, so it does not remove that file, and goes on to the next file.

and what I can do to get my desired results?

Besides using `find -exec` as unxnut explained, another way to do it is to use the `-o` (or `--open-tty`) option with `xargs`:

find -name '#*#' -print0 | xargs -0 -o rm -i

That's probably the ideal way, because it allows `rm -i` to handle interactive confirmation itself, as designed.

Another way is to use the `-p` (or `--interactive`) option with `xargs`:

find -name '#*#' -print0 | xargs -0 -p rm

With this approach, `xargs` handles the interactive confirmation instead of having `rm` do it. You may also want to use `-n 1`, so that each prompt only asks about one file:

find -name '#*#' -print0 | xargs -0 -p -n 1 rm

The advantage of using `xargs` over `find -exec` is that you can use it with any command that generates the file path arguments, not just with `find`.

Problem

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