APM: Modify in place and Argument list too long

[Wayne Walker]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 02:17:26PM -0500, Mike Stok wrote:
> The only thing I would add is that you can use find and xargs together on 
> files whose names include blanks, tabs, newlines etc like this
> 
> [mike at ratdog tmp]$ touch foo.html
> [mike at ratdog tmp]$ touch 'bar baz.html'
> [mike at ratdog tmp]$ ls -l
> total 0
> -rw-rw-r--    1 mike     mike            0 Mar 17 14:15 bar baz.html
> -rw-rw-r--    1 mike     mike            0 Mar 17 14:15 foo.html
> [mike at ratdog tmp]$ find . -name '*.html' | xargs ls
> ls: ./bar: No such file or directory
> ls: baz.html: No such file or directory
> ./foo.html
> [mike at ratdog tmp]$ find . -name '*.html' -print0 | xargs -0 ls
> ./bar baz.html  ./foo.html

I forgot to point that problem out (spaces and tabs in the names), but
had never seen the -0 and -print0 options.  Thanks!

I always fixed the the hard way:

find . -name '*.html' -print | sed -e 's/^/"/' -e 's/$/"/' | xargs .....

You'll need to do it the hard way on something like HP-UX, Solaris, and
other inferior OS's :)

> 
> Mike
> 
> -- 
> mike at stok.co.uk                    |           The "`Stok' disclaimers" apply.
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-- 

Wayne Walker

www.broadq.com :)  Bringing digital video and audio to the living room