Re: Delete 4 million files

[Chris Dale <cd@main.nc.us>]

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, Marc Shapiro wrote:
> jc wrote:
> > 
> > rm -rf --verbose to see what is being done
> 
> I know that the OP was interested in some indication of progress, but I 
> also know that I would not want to watch 4 million file names scroll 
> across the terminal.  Also, displaying that much output is going to slow 
> the job down and make it take even longer than it is already taking.

If you know the count, Pipe Viewer can give you a progress meter:

$ rm -frv dir | pv -l -s 4000000 > /dev/null
546k 0:00:02 [ 886/s ] [========>                  ] 36% ETA 0:00:03

cd