CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxfindwhitespacefilenamesxargs
Shriram
Shriram

Reputation: 4411

xargs fails when a filename contains white space

I am using xargs to search a content in a file but xargs fails because of whitespace in file name. What is the reason behind this? Anyway, I can acheive it by using -exec in the find command.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1099

Answers (1)

Kusalananda
Kusalananda

Reputation: 15603

When using find and xargs on files that may contain whitespace, use -print0 with find and -0 with xargs, that way xargs receives the file names separated by nul instead and will call the utility with the correct arguments.

For example, looking for "string" in all files in the current directory (and below):

$ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep "string"

See the manuals for both find and xargs.

Upvotes: 2

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