Thursday 6 November 2008

HOWTO: find

From man:
-exec command ;
Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting of `;' is encountered. The string `{}' is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere it occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in arguments where it is alone, as in some versions of find. Both of these constructions might need to be escaped (with a `\') or quoted to protect them from expansion by the shell. The command is executed in the starting directory.

find . -type f -exec file '{}' \; # '{}' or {}, and there is a space before '\';

Runs ‘file’ on every file in or below the current directory. Notice
that the braces are enclosed in single quote marks to protect them from
interpretation as shell script punctuation. The semicolon is similarly
protected by the use of a backslash, though single quotes could have
been used in that case also.

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`{}' is replaced by the current file name being processed;
\ is used for the iteration of found files.
; is to tell -exec that the job is done.

Example: find . -exec grep 'title="Phoca Gallery"' {} \; -ls
Normally above example suits our search jobs.

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