Simple deletion of files using text file list won't work

Question

I have to delete files specified by remove.txt which looks like this:

    img_8138.dng.jpg
    img_8140.dng.jpg
    img_8141.dng.jpg
    img_8143.dng.jpg

I've tried several suggestions from the web:

while read file; do rm "$file"; done < remove.txt

xargs -rd '\n' --arg-file=remove.txt rm -i --

rm $(cat /Volumes/space1/remove.txt)

xargs rm <remove.txt etc

The files are in the current directory some of which are to be deleted (remove.txt). Deletion works if I use rm on the current directory. But using the list I get the error below every time.

rm: cannot remove ‘img_8147.dng.jpg’: No such file or directory

Any ideas what's going wrong?

Answer 1

That error is expected. There is no full path leading to the directory containing the files within remove.txt. Thus, when you run rm $(cat /Volumes/space1/remove.txt) outside of the directory these files reside in, you get that error.

Simply run:

cd /Volumes/space1; rm `cat remove.txt`

Or modify the remove.txt file to include the full path.