Use the output of a command as input of the next command

Question

So I call this PHP script from the command line:

/usr/bin/php /var/www/bims/index.php "projects/output"

and its output is:

file1 file2 file3

What I would like to do is get this output and feed to the "rm" command but I think im not doing it right:

/usr/bin/php /var/www/bims/index.php "projects/output" | rm

My goal is to delete whatever file names the PHP script outputs. What should be the proper way to do this?

Thanks!

See also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23361329/how-to-use-the-output-of-a-command-as-an-input-to-other-program-in-linux which is a really basic question about pipes. — tripleee, Mar 25 '22 at 10:59

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 22 '10 at 09:24

12

/usr/bin/php /var/www/bims/index.php "projects/output" | xargs rm

answered Apr 22 '10 at 09:24

Victor Sorokin

man xargs: "xargs - build and execute command lines from standard input". You should read that manual page ;) – Victor Sorokin Apr 22 '10 at 09:31

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 22 '10 at 09:28

4

Simplest solution:

rm `/usr/bin/php /var/www/bims/index.php "projects/output"`

What is between the backticks (`` ) is run and the output is passed as argument torm`.

answered Apr 22 '10 at 09:28

Felix

1

xargs is slightly better: it can handle output that is too long for the maximum command line length by running `rm` more than once. – Harold L Apr 22 '10 at 09:36
I didn't say *better*. I said *simple* :). – Felix Apr 22 '10 at 09:53
1

note: might not work if the Php script produce files with spaces – ghostdog74 Apr 22 '10 at 12:58
Wikipedia has some interesting examples, KISSly explained, regarding files with spaces, lines, etc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xargs. – igordc May 07 '14 at 12:49
simple and elegant! – Edwin Chua May 10 '18 at 06:35

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 22 '10 at 09:25

3

you can try xargs

/usr/bin/php /var/www/bims/index.php "projects/output" | xargs rm

or just simply use a loop

/usr/bin/php /var/www/bims/index.php "projects/output" | while read -r out
do
  rm $out
done

answered Apr 22 '10 at 09:25

ghostdog74

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 16 '14 at 10:39

0

I guess this could help>>

grep -n "searchstring" filename | awk 'BEGIN { FS = " " };{print $1}'

answered Jun 16 '14 at 10:39

TestBud

4 Answers4