xargs rm gives error

[LukeCubox]

I am having trouble piping to rm using xargs. It keeps giving me this error.

rm -i *.mp3
rm: cannot remove ‘*.mp3’: No such file or directory

The command I used is below.

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$ ls -l | egrep -Eiv '^d' | egrep -Eio '\..*$' | uniq | sed 's/.*/*&/' | xargs -t rm  

There is definitely a .mp3 file there

~/test$ ls -l
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 luke luke 6 Apr 26 08:34 rmtest
-rw-r--r-- 1 luke luke 30 Apr 25 23:47 testfile
drwxr-xr-x 2 luke luke 4096 Apr 25 13:36 testing
-rw-r--r-- 1 luke luke 0 Apr 26 00:01 text.mp3

And when I run the command separately it works. I can't seem to find out why. I can only assume it is the * causing the issue as hardcoding the filename works, as below:

:~/test$ ls -l | egrep -Eiv '^d' | egrep -Eio '\..*$' | uniq | sed 's/.*/text\.mp3/' | xargs -tp rm -i
rm -i text.mp3 ?...y
rm: remove regular empty file ‘text.mp3’?

Any idea on how I can get the asterisk to work?

[LukeCubox]

I have managed to find some info on Google about using 'sh -c' now I get the 'missing operand' fault. I have tested it by substituting the find command and the wildcards still work. Anyone have a clue to what I am missing?

[ralph.ronnquist]

The pipeline includes this sub command:

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sed 's/.*/*&/'

which says "replace the whole line with *&" (star, ampersand). That's surely not what you intended?

[debiman]

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$ ls -l | egrep -Eiv '^d' | egrep -Eio '\..*$' | uniq | sed 's/.*/*&/' | xargs -t rm  

what is this supposed to achieve?
why not just

Code: Select all

rm *.mp3

???