“relative path potentially not safe” error with “find … -delete” on macOS

I'm trying to delete all files containing a certain text like this:

$ find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/* -exec grep -l "text to search for" '{}' ; -delete

/Users/build/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/06060826-3fb2-4d71-82c6-7b9d309b08d6.mobileprovision

find: -delete: /Users/build/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/06060826-3fb2-4d71-82c6-7b9d309b08d6.mobileprovision: relative path potentially not safe

However, as you can see, it's throwing a warning and then does not delete the file. How can I resolve this error?

This is on a Mac.

edited yesterday

Rui F Ribeiro

39.8k1479133

asked yesterday

Bart van den Burg

14115

add a comment |

I'm trying to delete all files containing a certain text like this:

$ find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/* -exec grep -l "text to search for" '{}' ; -delete

/Users/build/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/06060826-3fb2-4d71-82c6-7b9d309b08d6.mobileprovision

find: -delete: /Users/build/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/06060826-3fb2-4d71-82c6-7b9d309b08d6.mobileprovision: relative path potentially not safe

However, as you can see, it's throwing a warning and then does not delete the file. How can I resolve this error?

This is on a Mac.

edited yesterday

Rui F Ribeiro

39.8k1479133

asked yesterday

Bart van den Burg

14115

add a comment |

I'm trying to delete all files containing a certain text like this:

$ find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/* -exec grep -l "text to search for" '{}' ; -delete

/Users/build/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/06060826-3fb2-4d71-82c6-7b9d309b08d6.mobileprovision

find: -delete: /Users/build/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/06060826-3fb2-4d71-82c6-7b9d309b08d6.mobileprovision: relative path potentially not safe

However, as you can see, it's throwing a warning and then does not delete the file. How can I resolve this error?

This is on a Mac.

edited yesterday

Rui F Ribeiro

39.8k1479133

asked yesterday

Bart van den Burg

14115

I'm trying to delete all files containing a certain text like this:

$ find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/* -exec grep -l "text to search for" '{}' ; -delete

/Users/build/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/06060826-3fb2-4d71-82c6-7b9d309b08d6.mobileprovision

find: -delete: /Users/build/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/06060826-3fb2-4d71-82c6-7b9d309b08d6.mobileprovision: relative path potentially not safe

However, as you can see, it's throwing a warning and then does not delete the file. How can I resolve this error?

This is on a Mac.

find osx

edited yesterday

Rui F Ribeiro

39.8k1479133

asked yesterday

Bart van den Burg

14115

edited yesterday

Rui F Ribeiro

39.8k1479133

asked yesterday

Bart van den Burg

14115

edited yesterday

Rui F Ribeiro

39.8k1479133

edited yesterday

Rui F Ribeiro

39.8k1479133

edited yesterday

Rui F Ribeiro

39.8k1479133

asked yesterday

Bart van den Burg

14115

asked yesterday

Bart van den Burg

14115

asked yesterday

Bart van den Burg

14115

add a comment |

3 Answers
3

active

oldest

votes

macOS find is based on an older version of FreeBSD find whose -delete would not remove the files that were given as argument.

When you do:

find dir/* ... -delete

Your shell is expanding that dir/* glob into a list of file paths (excluding the hidden ones, while find itself will not exclude the hidden files it finds in any of those dirs), so find receives something like:

find dir/dir1 dir/dir2 dir/file1 dir/file2... ... -delete

If dir/file1 matches macOS find's -delete will refuse to delete it. It will happily delete a dir/dir1/.somefile if it matches though.

That was changed in FreeBSD in 2013, but the change apparently didn't make it to macOS. Here, the work around is easy: use find dir (or find dir/ if you want to allow for dir to be a symlink to a directory and find to descend into it) instead of find dir/*. So, in your case:

find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ 

  -exec grep -l "text to search for" '{}' ; -delete

Or use the more efficient grep -l --null | xargs -0 approach.

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

303k57570926

add a comment |

Try:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -name "name to match" -delete

Edit - first code is not abswer for question, try this:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -exec grep -l --null "pattern in file" {} + | xargs -0 rm

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Matej

365

New contributor

1

This is searching for a filename pattern. OP wants to find files which contain a certain string/text.

– Michael D.
yesterday

@MichaelD. Oh, you are right, my bad.

– Matej
yesterday

You can't use xargs in general on the output of find, but especially here, it won't work as the paths of the files contain spaces (all whitespace, quotes backslashes are a problem with find | xargs)

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

No, I meant -exec grep -q pattern {} ; -print0 | xargs -0 rm. macOS grep should also support GNU's --null option so -exec grep -l --null pattern {} + | xargs -0 rm should also work (and avoid running one grep per file).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

Yes. It's correct (there are some race condition issues linked to using xargs rm instead of -delete, but probably not worth working around here as we're presumably not removing files from a directory under control of potentially malicious actors).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

|
show 4 more comments

This is searching for string err in all files in /var/log/ recursive.

I'm not sure if cut, uniq and xargs is available on Mac and this is not using find.

grep -r "err" /var/log/ | cut -d: -f1 | uniq | xargs echo

Replace echo with rm to delete the files.

answered yesterday

Michael D.

1,577816

'find', cut, uniq and xargs are standard Unix utilities available on any Unix platform.

– Kusalananda
yesterday

add a comment |

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3 Answers
3

active

oldest

votes

3 Answers
3

active

oldest

votes

macOS find is based on an older version of FreeBSD find whose -delete would not remove the files that were given as argument.

When you do:

find dir/* ... -delete

find dir/dir1 dir/dir2 dir/file1 dir/file2... ... -delete

If dir/file1 matches macOS find's -delete will refuse to delete it. It will happily delete a dir/dir1/.somefile if it matches though.

find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ 

  -exec grep -l "text to search for" '{}' ; -delete

Or use the more efficient grep -l --null | xargs -0 approach.

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

303k57570926

add a comment |

macOS find is based on an older version of FreeBSD find whose -delete would not remove the files that were given as argument.

When you do:

find dir/* ... -delete

find dir/dir1 dir/dir2 dir/file1 dir/file2... ... -delete

If dir/file1 matches macOS find's -delete will refuse to delete it. It will happily delete a dir/dir1/.somefile if it matches though.

find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ 

  -exec grep -l "text to search for" '{}' ; -delete

Or use the more efficient grep -l --null | xargs -0 approach.

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

303k57570926

add a comment |

macOS find is based on an older version of FreeBSD find whose -delete would not remove the files that were given as argument.

When you do:

find dir/* ... -delete

find dir/dir1 dir/dir2 dir/file1 dir/file2... ... -delete

If dir/file1 matches macOS find's -delete will refuse to delete it. It will happily delete a dir/dir1/.somefile if it matches though.

find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ 

  -exec grep -l "text to search for" '{}' ; -delete

Or use the more efficient grep -l --null | xargs -0 approach.

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

303k57570926

macOS find is based on an older version of FreeBSD find whose -delete would not remove the files that were given as argument.

When you do:

find dir/* ... -delete

find dir/dir1 dir/dir2 dir/file1 dir/file2... ... -delete

If dir/file1 matches macOS find's -delete will refuse to delete it. It will happily delete a dir/dir1/.somefile if it matches though.

find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ 

  -exec grep -l "text to search for" '{}' ; -delete

Or use the more efficient grep -l --null | xargs -0 approach.

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

303k57570926

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

303k57570926

answered yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

303k57570926

answered yesterday

Stéphane Chazelas

303k57570926

add a comment |

Try:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -name "name to match" -delete

Edit - first code is not abswer for question, try this:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -exec grep -l --null "pattern in file" {} + | xargs -0 rm

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Matej

365

New contributor

1

This is searching for a filename pattern. OP wants to find files which contain a certain string/text.

– Michael D.
yesterday

@MichaelD. Oh, you are right, my bad.

– Matej
yesterday

You can't use xargs in general on the output of find, but especially here, it won't work as the paths of the files contain spaces (all whitespace, quotes backslashes are a problem with find | xargs)

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

No, I meant -exec grep -q pattern {} ; -print0 | xargs -0 rm. macOS grep should also support GNU's --null option so -exec grep -l --null pattern {} + | xargs -0 rm should also work (and avoid running one grep per file).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

Yes. It's correct (there are some race condition issues linked to using xargs rm instead of -delete, but probably not worth working around here as we're presumably not removing files from a directory under control of potentially malicious actors).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

|
show 4 more comments

Try:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -name "name to match" -delete

Edit - first code is not abswer for question, try this:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -exec grep -l --null "pattern in file" {} + | xargs -0 rm

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Matej

365

New contributor

1

This is searching for a filename pattern. OP wants to find files which contain a certain string/text.

– Michael D.
yesterday

@MichaelD. Oh, you are right, my bad.

– Matej
yesterday

You can't use xargs in general on the output of find, but especially here, it won't work as the paths of the files contain spaces (all whitespace, quotes backslashes are a problem with find | xargs)

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

No, I meant -exec grep -q pattern {} ; -print0 | xargs -0 rm. macOS grep should also support GNU's --null option so -exec grep -l --null pattern {} + | xargs -0 rm should also work (and avoid running one grep per file).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

Yes. It's correct (there are some race condition issues linked to using xargs rm instead of -delete, but probably not worth working around here as we're presumably not removing files from a directory under control of potentially malicious actors).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

|
show 4 more comments

Try:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -name "name to match" -delete

Edit - first code is not abswer for question, try this:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -exec grep -l --null "pattern in file" {} + | xargs -0 rm

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Matej

365

New contributor

Try:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -name "name to match" -delete

Edit - first code is not abswer for question, try this:
find ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ -type f -exec grep -l --null "pattern in file" {} + | xargs -0 rm

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Matej

365

New contributor

edited yesterday

answered yesterday

Matej

365

New contributor

answered yesterday

Matej

365

answered yesterday

Matej

365

New contributor

Matej is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.

1

This is searching for a filename pattern. OP wants to find files which contain a certain string/text.

– Michael D.
yesterday

@MichaelD. Oh, you are right, my bad.

– Matej
yesterday

You can't use xargs in general on the output of find, but especially here, it won't work as the paths of the files contain spaces (all whitespace, quotes backslashes are a problem with find | xargs)

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

No, I meant -exec grep -q pattern {} ; -print0 | xargs -0 rm. macOS grep should also support GNU's --null option so -exec grep -l --null pattern {} + | xargs -0 rm should also work (and avoid running one grep per file).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

Yes. It's correct (there are some race condition issues linked to using xargs rm instead of -delete, but probably not worth working around here as we're presumably not removing files from a directory under control of potentially malicious actors).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

|
show 4 more comments

1

This is searching for a filename pattern. OP wants to find files which contain a certain string/text.

– Michael D.
yesterday

@MichaelD. Oh, you are right, my bad.

– Matej
yesterday

You can't use xargs in general on the output of find, but especially here, it won't work as the paths of the files contain spaces (all whitespace, quotes backslashes are a problem with find | xargs)

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

No, I meant -exec grep -q pattern {} ; -print0 | xargs -0 rm. macOS grep should also support GNU's --null option so -exec grep -l --null pattern {} + | xargs -0 rm should also work (and avoid running one grep per file).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

1

Yes. It's correct (there are some race condition issues linked to using xargs rm instead of -delete, but probably not worth working around here as we're presumably not removing files from a directory under control of potentially malicious actors).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

This is searching for a filename pattern. OP wants to find files which contain a certain string/text.

– Michael D.
yesterday

@MichaelD. Oh, you are right, my bad.

– Matej
yesterday

You can't use xargs in general on the output of find, but especially here, it won't work as the paths of the files contain spaces (all whitespace, quotes backslashes are a problem with find | xargs)

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

No, I meant -exec grep -q pattern {} ; -print0 | xargs -0 rm. macOS grep should also support GNU's --null option so -exec grep -l --null pattern {} + | xargs -0 rm should also work (and avoid running one grep per file).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

Yes. It's correct (there are some race condition issues linked to using xargs rm instead of -delete, but probably not worth working around here as we're presumably not removing files from a directory under control of potentially malicious actors).

– Stéphane Chazelas
yesterday

|
show 4 more comments

This is searching for string err in all files in /var/log/ recursive.

I'm not sure if cut, uniq and xargs is available on Mac and this is not using find.

grep -r "err" /var/log/ | cut -d: -f1 | uniq | xargs echo

Replace echo with rm to delete the files.

answered yesterday

Michael D.

1,577816

'find', cut, uniq and xargs are standard Unix utilities available on any Unix platform.

– Kusalananda
yesterday

add a comment |

This is searching for string err in all files in /var/log/ recursive.

I'm not sure if cut, uniq and xargs is available on Mac and this is not using find.

grep -r "err" /var/log/ | cut -d: -f1 | uniq | xargs echo

Replace echo with rm to delete the files.

answered yesterday

Michael D.

1,577816

'find', cut, uniq and xargs are standard Unix utilities available on any Unix platform.

– Kusalananda
yesterday

add a comment |

This is searching for string err in all files in /var/log/ recursive.

I'm not sure if cut, uniq and xargs is available on Mac and this is not using find.

grep -r "err" /var/log/ | cut -d: -f1 | uniq | xargs echo

Replace echo with rm to delete the files.

answered yesterday

Michael D.

1,577816

This is searching for string err in all files in /var/log/ recursive.

I'm not sure if cut, uniq and xargs is available on Mac and this is not using find.

grep -r "err" /var/log/ | cut -d: -f1 | uniq | xargs echo

Replace echo with rm to delete the files.

answered yesterday

Michael D.

1,577816

answered yesterday

Michael D.

1,577816

answered yesterday

Michael D.

1,577816

answered yesterday

Michael D.

1,577816

'find', cut, uniq and xargs are standard Unix utilities available on any Unix platform.

– Kusalananda
yesterday

add a comment |

'find', cut, uniq and xargs are standard Unix utilities available on any Unix platform.

– Kusalananda
yesterday

'find', cut, uniq and xargs are standard Unix utilities available on any Unix platform.

– Kusalananda
yesterday

add a comment |

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