23 May
2001
23 May
'01
4:59 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great John Foust once stated:
At 07:32 PM 5/22/01 -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote:
Again, it depends. A modern CLI (under Unix) with filename completion may
be just as fast:
rm "Report<tab>"Picture of<tab>Ste<tab>"Picture of
my<tab>on<tab>...
And so on. Okay, so I'm a fast touch typist so it might be an even race
(even if the list is alphabetical on the GUI side). But if the list is in a
file, it would be just as easy to do:
rm `cat list-o-files`
And be done with it, no convoluted shell scripts 8-)
Or, you did say delete a random set of 50 of those files, so:
rm `ls -f -1 | head -50`
Delete the first 50 files in the order that they appear on the disk, and
not alphabetically (which, depending on the order they were created, is just
as random).
-spc (I guess it depends upon how much you know of the environment)
Like selecting multiple items, then dragging and
dropping them. Well,
it's easier at least. Otherwise, I can do everything faster in a command
line.
OK, let's race. I think it's easy to think of counter-examples,
even though I'm a fan of command-line power in the right situation.
Given a folder full of 100 documents with long, human-friendly
filenames with no relevant pattern involving strings of characters
or dates, delete a given random set of 50 of those files. I'll use
any windowing system, you'll use 'del' or 'rm'. I think an extended
select (via CTRL) and a drag to the trash would win on either Mac or
Windows, don't you?
While 'rm' might have an interactive "yes/no" option, which
other command-line tools have it? Sure, you can write anything
in a script...