Recursively copy /dev/null to file pattern

Question

I am using a ZFS system that has reached its disk quota. As a result, the rm command no longer is available to me. However, I am able to copy /dev/null to particular files to effectively remove them.

The issue is that the directory I am trying to clear out is roughly 40GB in size, and each file that has any girth is buried within 3 levels.

Is there a command line way to easily search and replace those files with /dev/null? I could do it pretty easily in Python/Perl, however I want to try via the command line.

Answer 1

Edit: this is the better answer found in the comments:

find $DELDIR -type f -exec cp /dev/null "{}" \;

The old answer is here:

find $DELDIR -type f | xargs cp /dev/null

where $DELDIR is the name of the directory to start in. The -type f option targets only files, not directories. And of course xargs just finishes off cp /dev/null with the file names from each line of find output.

Answer 2

carefully try:

find $DELDIR -type f | xargs cp -af /dev/null {} \;