[CLUE-Tech] bash and spaces

[Dale K. Hawkins]

Wait.  I should read the and grok the question before replying.  The
biggest advantage of xargs over -exec is the command is only invoked
once (unless otherwise requested).  This can be a significant time
saving if the child process is hefty.

My original message was based on a misunderstanding of the question.  I
was trying to answer the wrong question.  Some one may still find the
discussion regarding '-0' useful.  (And since I wrote it, I am going to
send it anyway, damn it/ :-) )

---

It is really the combination of "find" with the -print0 option in
conjunction with xargs and the -0 option.  Essentially, these output
"null" separated strings instead of space separated.  This means you
need not worry about the space problem.

$ mkdir example
$ cd example/
$ touch 'space name'

$ find . -type f -print | xargs ls -l
ls: ./space: No such file or directory
ls: name: No such file or directory

$ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -l
-rw-r--r--  1 dhawkins dhawkins 0 2004-11-09 15:50 ./space name


On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 12:58 -0700, Greg Knaddison wrote:
> Dave,
> 
> Sorry for being dense.  Can you describe why xargs is better than
> exec?  I did a little bit of searching but couldn't find anything.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Greg
> 
> 
> On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 11:56:26 -0700, David Anselmi <anselmi at anselmi.us> wrote:
> > 
> > It's usually better to use xargs with find rather than -exec.  Then you
> > can use find's -print0 and xargs's -0 and voila.
> >
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