FASTRM(1)
NAME
fastrm - quickly remove a set of files
SYNOPSIS
fastrm [ -d ] [ -e ] [ -uN ] [ -sM ] [ -cI ] base_direc-
tory
DESCRIPTION
Fastrm reads a list of files, one per line, from its stan-
dard input and removes them. If a file is not an absolute
pathname, it is taken relative to the directory specified
on the command line. The base_directory parameter must be
a simple absolute pathname -- that is, it must not contain
any ``/./'' or ``/../'' references.
Fastrm is designed to be faster than the typical
``| xargs rm'' pipeline. For example, fastrm will usually
chdir(2) into a directory before removing files from it.
If the input is sorted, this means that most files to be
removed will be simple names.
Fastrm assumes that its input is valid and that it is safe
to just do an unlink(2) call for each item to be removed.
As a safety measure, if fastrm is run by root it will
first stat(2) the item to make sure that it is not a
directory before unlinking it.
OPTIONS
-d If the ``-d'' flag is used then no files are
removed. Instead a list of the files to be
removed, in debug form, is printed on the standard
output. Each line contains either the current
directory of fastrm at the time it would do the
unlink, and then the path name it would pass to
unlink(2) as two fields separated by white space
and a ``/'', or the absolute path name (a single
field) of files it would unlink using the absolute
path name.
-e If the ``-e'' flag is used, fastrm will treat an
empty input file (stdin) as an error. This is most
useful when fastrm is last in a pipeline after a
preceding sort(1) as if the sort fails, there will
usually be no output to become input of fastrm.
-u If the ``-u'' flag is used, then fastrm makes fur-
ther assumptions about its work environment; in
particular, that there are no symbolic links in the
target tree. This flag also suggests that it is
probably faster to reference the path ``../../../''
rather than start from the root and come down.
(Note that this probably isn't true on systems that
have a namei cache, which usually holds everything
except ``..''). The optional N is an integer that
specifies the maximum number of ``..'' segments to
use -- paths that would use more than this use the
absolute path name (from the root) instead. If the
``-u'' flag is given without a value, ``-u1'' is
assumed.
-s If the ``-s'' flag is used, then fastrm will per-
form the unlinks from one directory -- that is when
a group of files in one directory appear in the
input consecutively -- in the order that the files
appear in the directory from which they are to be
removed. The intent of this flag is that on sys-
tems that have a per-process directory cache, find-
ing files in the directory should be faster. It
can have smaller benefits on other systems. The
optional M is an integer that specifies the number
of files that must be going to be removed from one
directory before the files will be ordered. If the
``-s'' flag is given without a value, ``-s5'' is
assumed. When the directory reordering is in use
fastrm will avoid attempting to unlink files that
it can't see in the directory, which can speed it
appreciably when many of the file names have
already been removed.
-c The ``-c'' flag may be given to instruct fastrm
when it should chdir(2). If the number of files to
be unlinked from a directory is at least I then
fastrm will chdir and unlink the files from in the
directory. Otherwise it will build a path relative
to its current directory. If ``-c'' is given with-
out the optional integer I then ``-c1'' is assumed,
which will cause fastrm to always use chdir. If
``-c'' is not used at all, then ``-c3'' is assumed.
Use ``-c0'' to prevent fastrm from ever using
chdir(2).
-a -r There are also ``-a'' and ``-r'' options, which do
nothing at all, except allow you to say ``fastrm
-usa'' ``fastrm -ussr'' or ``fastrm -user''. These
happen to often be convenient sets of options to
use.
EXIT STATUS
Fastrm exits with a status of zero if there were no prob-
lems, or one if something went wrong. Attempting to
remove a file that does not exist is not considered a
problem. If the program exits with a non-zero status, it
is probably a good idea to feed the list of files into an
``xargs rm'' pipeline.
HISTORY
This is revision 1.3, dated 1996/10/29.