Why does find -exec mv target not work

Question

I want to know exactly what       and       and   xargs     do  Please clarify these with explanations   Below 3 commands run and output same result but the first command takes a little time and the format is also little different    find   -type f -exec file       find   -type f -exec file       find   -type f   xargs file   It s because 1st one runs the file command for every file coming from the find command  So  basically it runs as    file file1 txt file file2 txt   But latter 2 find with -exec commands run file command once for all files like below   file file1 txt file2 txt   Then I run the following commands on which first one runs without problem but second one gives error message   find   -type f -iname    cpp  -exec mv      test     find   -type f -iname    cpp  -exec mv      test      gives error find  missing argument to  -exec    For command with        it gives me the error message   find  missing argument to  -exec    why is that  can anyone please explain what am I doing wrong

User · Answer

The standard equivalent of find -iname     -exec mv -t dest      for find implementations that don t support -iname or mv implementations that don t support -t is to use a shell to re-order the arguments   find   -name     cC  pP  pP   -type f -exec sh -c     exec mv       dest dir   sh        By using -name     cC  pP  pP    we also avoid the reliance on the current locale to decide what s the uppercase version of c or p   Note that    contrary to   is not special in any shell so doesn t need to be quoted  though quoting won t harm  except of course with shells like rc that don t support   as a quoting operator    The trailing   in  dest dir  is so that mv fails with an error instead of renaming foo cpp to  dest dir in the case where only one cpp file was found and  dest dir didn t exist or wasn t a directory  or symlink to directory

User · Answer

find   -name    mp3  -exec mv --target-directory  home d0k

User · Answer

I encountered the same issue on Mac OSX  using a ZSH shell  in this case there is no -t option for mv  so I had to find another solution  However the following command succeeded   find      -maxdepth 0 -not -path   git  -not -path   backup  -exec mv       backup      The secret was to quote the braces  No need for the braces to be at the end of the exec command   I tested under Ubuntu 14 04  with BASH and ZSH shells   it works the same   However  when using the   sign  it seems indeed that it has to be at the end of the exec command

User · Answer

The manual page  or the online GNU manual  pretty much explains everything   find -exec command        For each result  command    is executed  All occurences of    are replaced by the filename    is prefixed with a slash to prevent the shell from interpreting it   find -exec command       Each result is appended to command and executed afterwards  Taking the command length limitations into account  I guess that this command may be executed more times  with the manual page supporting me      the total number of invocations of the command will be much less than the number of matched  files    Note this quote from the manual page      The  command  line is built in much the same way that xargs builds its command lines   That s why no characters are allowed between    and   except for whitespace    makes find detect that the arguments should be appended to the command just like xargs   The solution  Luckily  the GNU implementation of mv can accept the target directory as an argument  with either -t or the longer parameter --target  It s usage will be   mv -t target file1 file2       Your find command becomes   find   -type f -iname    cpp  -exec mv -t   test            From the manual page      -exec command        Execute  command  true if 0 status is returned   All following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting of     is encountered   The string      is replaced by the current file name  being  processed  everywhere  it occurs  in the arguments to the command  not just in arguments where it is alone  as in some versions of find   Both of these constructions might need to be escaped  with a      or quoted to protect them from expansion by the shell   See the EXAMPLES  section for examples of the use of the -exec option   The specified command is run once for each matched file   The command is executed in the starting directory    There are unavoidable security problems surrounding use of the -exec action  you should use the -execdir option instead       -exec command           This variant of the -exec action runs the specified command on the selected files  but the command line is built by appending each selected file name at the end  the total number of invocations of the command will be much less than the number of matched  files  The  command  line is built in much the same way that xargs builds its command lines   Only one instance of      is allowed within the command   The command is executed in the starting directory

User · Answer

no  the difference between   and    should be reversed     appends the files to the end of the exec command then runs the exec command and    runs the command for each file   The problem is find   -type f -iname    cpp  -exec mv      test     should be find   -type f -iname    cpp  -exec mv      test     no need to escape it or terminate the      xargs I haven t used in a long time but I think works like

[linux] Why does find -exec mv {} ./target/ + not work?

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