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Based on this helpful answer for how to find sparse files

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/573434/426237

I came up with this command to delete sparse files (or rather, files with exacly zero size on disk)

find *.* -type f -printf "%S\t%p\n" | gawk '$1 == 0 {print $2}' | xargs rm

Unfortunately, this breaks if the filename contains spaces. In that case, the name gets split up into different columns. Can I modify this pipe command to have gawk output the complete filename even it contains spaces? Or do I need to take a different route?

[For context: I am using a bash shell (Git bash) on Windows to find and delete unsynced Dropbox files, which have zero file on disk.]

Michael Bauer
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    `find ./* -type f -size 0 -printf "%p\n" -exec rm {} +` – user174174 Dec 28 '22 at 23:42
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    Don't `-exec rm {} +`, just simply `-delete`, don't specify strange subdirectories when you mean "here": `find -type f -size 0 -delete`, that's it @user174174 – Marcus Müller Dec 28 '22 at 23:59
  • There are several problems with the awk: (a) You need to output all the fields from $2 to $NF. (b) When the fields are split as whitespace, any multiple spaces and tabs are discarded. (c) The whole of the filename needs to be quoted, or you need `xargs -I -0`, to prevent xargs from also taking each word as a separate argument. The cleanest way is to not use fields, just `sub()` off up to the first tab, and use `ORS = "\0"` in awk and `-0` in xargs. But the `find` using `-exec rm`, or even `-delete`, is better in this case. – Paul_Pedant Dec 29 '22 at 00:03
  • Not quite sure though that that -size 0 gets non-empty but fully sparse files – Marcus Müller Dec 29 '22 at 00:17
  • @MarcusMüller what I wrote extra comparing to yours was just for more clarification, path, printf, exec. so OP knows there are much possibilities than just find and delete. BTW TY. worth to mention not all empty files are useless, also -empty can be used in case of dirs+files. – user174174 Dec 29 '22 at 00:19

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Try this (untested) if you do need a find | gawk | xargs pipeline for some reason:

find . -type f -printf '%S %p\0' |
gawk 'BEGIN{RS=ORS="\0"} $1 == 0 {sub(/^[^ ]+ /,""); print}' |
xargs -0 echo

Change echo to rm when you're done testing.

Ed Morton
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