On Sep 16, 13:32, Benoit MARTEL wrote:
> Subject: Re: uninstalling
> On Sat, 13 Sep 1997, David Brownlee wrote:
>
> > 	'tar tzf packagefile.gz | xargs rm'

> On most UNIX systems that will fail because you will get a command line
> way too big (assuming a large number of files, as in the base121). I dont
> remember trying it on NetBSD but I assume its the same.

But that's the whole purpose of xargs, although it's not fully spelled out in
the NetBSD version of xargs(1), it is hinted at. xargs reads arguments from
stdin, and executes the specified command as many times as is necessary to
process all of the read arguments without overflowing the limits referred to.

Bernard.
Tangled up in Blue.