Argument list too long error for rm, cp, mv commands

The reason this occurs is because bash actually expands the asterisk to every matching file, producing a very long command line.

Try this:

find . -name "*.pdf" -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Warning: this is a recursive search and will find (and delete) files in subdirectories as well. Tack on -f to the rm command only if you are sure you don’t want confirmation.

You can do the following to make the command non-recursive:

find . -maxdepth 1 -name "*.pdf" -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Another option is to use find’s -delete flag:

find . -name "*.pdf" -delete