Re: How to use Procmail to remove messages from server after x number of days

> Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:35:59 -0500
> From: Richard Ball <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: How to use Procmail to remove messages from server after x number
> 	of days
>
> On 1-3-2011 16:31, LuKreme wrote:

[[..  sneck  ..]
> >
> > -exec rm {} \; is simply a long way of spawning a shell and executing 
> > rm for old, OLD versions of find that don't have -delete.
> >
> >
> Which will break if too many files are found. (where "too many" means the 
> length of the string of filenames exceeds the buffer length allocated for 
> commands on the system).

"Not exactly" --  to put it politely.

A find(1) "-exec ..' clause is executed for _each_ matching file that 
find(1) finds.  '{}" is replaced by the filename, _singular_, that was 
just found to mamtch.

In the days before things like xargs(1),
   'find -name {{pattern}} -exec rm {} \;'
was a =standard= way of getting around a 'line too long' error from 
   'rm {{pattenr}}'