I am executing the following command (to find all files with .ts extension and deleting them):
find . -type f -name "*.ts" –delete
An error shows up:
find: paths must precede expression: `–delete'
What have I done wrong?
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1 Answer
You have typographic sign – instead of minus (-).
Change your command to
find . -type f -name "*.ts" -delete
For complete syntax see man find:
ACTIONS
-deleteDelete files; true if removal succeeded. If the removal failed, an error message is issued.
If-deletefails,find's exit status will be nonzero (when it eventually exits).
Use of-deleteautomatically turns on the-depthoption.
Be careful with copying and pasting commands from blogs and rich text processors. They may transform some typographic symbols to their plain text equivalents and vice versa.
Consider to use simple text editors for the notes next time - use plain text, Markdown or reStructuredText.
And as @AuxTaco mentioned - some blogs may rely on your copying to attack your computer.
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In this particular case we do not know the source of this command. If original author wrongly had
--then engine converted it to–. So we do not know the whole story :)– N0rbertJan 2, 2019 at 11:04 -
2I can tell the story: I copy-pasted it from terminal to a MS Word document consisted of command set to deploy our server. MS Word is auto-fixing the dash in some cases. Then a year or some after i copied that command and the question opened... Thanks.– DoradJan 2, 2019 at 14:48
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1It's probably better to use Notepad++ in this situation, rather than Word.– DavidwJan 2, 2019 at 22:41
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1Never use a word processor to edit code. That's (a big reason) why there are still text editors. The last thing you need is substituted characters, or word wrap.– JoeJan 3, 2019 at 12:34