Re: rm -rf is too slow on large files and directory structure(Around 30000)

["Christofer C. Bell" <christofer.c.bell@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 1:38 AM, Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@shellworld.net> wrote:
> Anyone heard of the unlink command?

unlink is slower than rm removing a 1.5GB file (at least on ext3):

cbell@circe:~$ time rm test1

real	0m0.278s
user	0m0.000s
sys	0m0.264s

cbell@circe:~$ time unlink test2

real	0m0.375s
user	0m0.000s
sys	0m0.364s
cbell@circe:~$

But may provide some benefit when removing a large number (30000) of
files (at least empty ones).

cbell@circe:~/test$ time find rm -type f -exec rm {} \;

real	0m48.127s
user	1m32.926s
sys	0m38.750s

cbell@circe:~/test$ time find unlink -type f -exec unlink {} \;

real	0m46.167s
user	1m32.194s
sys	0m39.346s
cbell@circe:~/test$

I suspect that removing a large number of non-zero byte files will be
slower with unlink than rm.

-- 
Chris