Normally, when I want to use the find command to delete files, I do this:

$ find . -name foo -exec rm {} \;

Turns out I could also do this:

$ find . -name foo -delete

However, while investigating the -delete action, I read this in man find:

-delete
Delete files; true if removal succeeded. If the removal failed, an error
message is issued. If -delete fails, find's exit status will be nonzero
(when it eventually exits). Use of -delete automatically turns on the 
-depth option.

Warnings: Don't forget that the find command line is evaluated as an 
expression, so putting -delete first will make find try to delete 
everything below the starting points you specified.

Well, sure, that really does make sense. Putting the -delete action where the expressions go would definitely cause a disaster. At the same time, you’d like to think that you might get warned first before find went ahead and nuked all your files. Two takeaways from this:

  1. UNIX doesn’t baby its users. If you tell your system to delete your files, by God, that’s what it’s going to do!

  2. Always test your particular find construction first before unleashing its full fury.