-execdir interpretation on Linux and OSX

Question

find . -iname '*.rar' -execdir ls {} +

this will not work under OSX Lion, yielding ls: blabla.rar: No such file or directory etc..

Additionally, above will work under Linux. However, it will invoke ls as many times as it find result. Tested with simple cat $# script.

So I see 2 problems with -execdir

under Linux it will NOT combine search result as stated in manual when using {} +
under OSX it will NOT change directory as stated in manual, again using {} +

Wanted to confirm that this is buggy and not my misunderstanding.

rici · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-25 17:51:55Z

3

I don't know about Mountain Lion, but it's a known bug in GNU findutils, apparently fixed in the 4.5 branch (check your find --version). See https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?19593

There is also this bug: https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?29949 in find version 4.5.9, which matches the Mountain Lion symptom. Perhaps you should check both version numbers.

answered Oct 25, 2012 at 17:51

rici

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2 Comments

Pablo Over a year ago

Sounds like same symptoms, tried with pwd originally, not changing directory. Not even sure how to check findutil version on Lion... --version doesn't work.

rici Over a year ago

@Pablo if it doesn't respond to --version, it's not GNU find; it could well be FreeBSD find. I no longer have either a Mac or a FreeBSD box handy, so I can't help you there, but you could try Googling for FreeBSD bug reports.

John Kugelman · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-25 17:36:51Z

0

On Linux does it execute ls once for every file or once for every sub-directory? From man find (GNU findutils version 4.4.2):

As with the -exec action, the ‘+’ form of -execdir will build a command line to process more than one matched file, but any given invocation of command will only list files that exist in the same subdirectory.

answered Oct 25, 2012 at 17:36

John Kugelman

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2 Comments

Pablo Over a year ago

I've just tried on Linux to put files under same sub-directory. Still I see echo $# will give me one invocation per file, nothing is combined.

Pablo Over a year ago

find . -iname "*.asd" -execdir test.sh {} + is the test script. test.sh contains echo $#.

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