CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshellcommand-linecommand-line-arguments
Andersen SOOS
Andersen SOOS

Reputation: 47

Meaning of Exclamation mark in Bash command line

I have found this command online, finding and displaying hardlinks to a file e.g. text.txt.

My question: What is the exclamation mark (!) doing in this command?

find $PWD ! -type d -links +1 -ls | sort -n|cut -d" " -f29 | grep --color=auto "$2"

Upvotes: 2

Views: 8614

Answers (1)

Aaron Digulla
Aaron Digulla

Reputation: 328556

This negates the next condition. So ! -type d means "not a directory".

There is one problem, though: ! is also a special character which is used to make bash do history expansion. That's why you often have to escape (... \! ...) or quote it (... "!" ...).

See also: The manual for find (try man find or info find).

Upvotes: 6

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