rmdir when directory is not empty

[Mike McCarty]

Chasecreek Systemhouse wrote:
> On 12/20/05, Mogens Kjaer <mk at crc.dk> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>That won't work on directories that have tens of thousands of files.
>>
>>Why not?
>>
>>As long as you don't do a:
>>
>>rm -f /dir/folder-with-many-files/*
>>
>>that, of course won't work, but
>>
>>rm -rf /dir/folder-with-many-files
>>
>>should work.
> 
> 
> 
> Have you tried it?  rm will fail because the shell cannot keep track
> of that many;
> the find cmd works because it deals with one file at a time.
> 
> --
> WC -Sx- Jones | http://ccsh.us/ | Open Source Consulting

$ cd
$ mkdir bigdir
$ cd bigdir
$ mkdir anotherdir
$ touch anotherdir/afile
$ ls anotherdir
afile
$ cp -p ../makefiles.c .
$ cat makefiles.c
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

#define NUM_FILES   10000

int     main(void) {
     int     FileNum;
     char    TouchFile[20];

     for (FileNum = 0; FileNum < NUM_FILES; FileNum++) {
         sprintf(TouchFile,"touch file%08d",FileNum);
         if (system(TouchFile) == -1) {
             printf("oops: %s\n",TouchFile);
             return EXIT_FAILURE;
         }
     }
     return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
$ gcc -o makefiles makefiles.c
$ ./makefiles
$ ls | head
anotherdir
file00000000
file00000001
file00000002
file00000003
file00000004
file00000005
file00000006
file00000007
file00000008

$ ls | tail
file00009992
file00009993
file00009994
file00009995
file00009996
file00009997
file00009998
file00009999
makefiles
makefiles.c

$ ls | wc
   10003   10003  130033

$ cd
$ rm -r bigdir
$ ls bigdir
ls: bigdir: No such file or directory

Works for me, with 10002 files and one directory with
a file under it.

Mike
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