That's right. And even if we assume `rm' does build those gigabytes, `find | xargs' should not. xargs is smart enough to build commands with chunk of the input

That's right. And even if we assume `rm' does build those gigabytes, `find | xargs' should not. xargs is smart enough to build commands with chunk of the input and execute them one by one. The job can also be done with one of the several programming languages, Perl oneliner being my choice. Actually, this could be a good interview riddle, along the lines of fixing `chmod a-x /bin/chmod'.