Finding core files

To find and remove core files conditionally:

# find ~ -name core -exec file {} \; -exec rm -i {} \; 

"file" will show which executable the core file is for and the -i option to rm will allow you to choose weather to delete it or not.

# find ~ -name core -exec file {} \; -exec rm -i {} \;

/my/home/core: ELF 32-bit LSB core file of 'netscape-commun'
(signal 3), Intel 8
rm: remove `/my/home/core'? y

Alternatively, if you just want to remove the core files without knowing what file generated them, the use the following

find ~ -name core -exec rm -f {} \;