How do I include a pipe in my linux find -exec command

Question

This isn t working   Can this be done in find   Or do I need to xargs   find -name  file    -follow -type f -exec zcat       agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

I found that running a string shell command  sh -c  works best  for example   find -name  file    -follow -type f -exec bash -c  zcat          agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

The job of interpreting the pipe symbol as an instruction to run multiple processes and pipe the output of one process into the input of another process is the responsibility of the shell   bin sh or equivalent     In your example you can either choose to use your top level shell to perform the piping like so   find -name  file    -follow -type f -exec zcat         agrep -dEOE  grep    In terms of efficiency this results costs one invocation of find  numerous invocations of zcat  and one invocation of agrep   This would result in only a single agrep process being spawned which would process all the output produced by numerous invocations of zcat   If you for some reason would like to invoke agrep multiple times  you can do   find   -name  file    -follow -type f       -printf  zcat  p   agrep -dEOE  grep  n    sh   This constructs a list of commands using pipes to execute  then sends these to a new shell to actually be executed    Omitting the final    sh  is a nice way to debug or perform dry runs of command lines like this    In terms of efficiency this results costs one invocation of find  one invocation of sh  numerous invocations of zcat and numerous invocations of agrep   The most efficient solution in terms of number of command invocations is the suggestion from Paul Tomblin   find   -name  file    -follow -type f -print0   xargs -0 zcat   agrep -dEOE  grep        which costs one invocation of find  one invocation of xargs  a few invocations of zcat and one invocation of agrep

User · Answer

If you are looking for a simple alternative, this can be done using a loop:

for i in $(find -name 'file_*' -follow -type f); do
  zcat $i | agrep -dEOE 'grep'
done

or, more general and easy to understand form:

for i in $(YOUR_FIND_COMMAND); do
  YOUR_EXEC_COMMAND_AND_PIPES
done

and replace any {} by $i in YOUR_EXEC_COMMAND_AND_PIPES

User · Answer

find   -name  file    -follow -type f -print0   xargs -0 zcat   agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

The job of interpreting the pipe symbol as an instruction to run multiple processes and pipe the output of one process into the input of another process is the responsibility of the shell   bin sh or equivalent     In your example you can either choose to use your top level shell to perform the piping like so   find -name  file    -follow -type f -exec zcat         agrep -dEOE  grep    In terms of efficiency this results costs one invocation of find  numerous invocations of zcat  and one invocation of agrep   This would result in only a single agrep process being spawned which would process all the output produced by numerous invocations of zcat   If you for some reason would like to invoke agrep multiple times  you can do   find   -name  file    -follow -type f       -printf  zcat  p   agrep -dEOE  grep  n    sh   This constructs a list of commands using pipes to execute  then sends these to a new shell to actually be executed    Omitting the final    sh  is a nice way to debug or perform dry runs of command lines like this    In terms of efficiency this results costs one invocation of find  one invocation of sh  numerous invocations of zcat and numerous invocations of agrep   The most efficient solution in terms of number of command invocations is the suggestion from Paul Tomblin   find   -name  file    -follow -type f -print0   xargs -0 zcat   agrep -dEOE  grep        which costs one invocation of find  one invocation of xargs  a few invocations of zcat and one invocation of agrep

User · Answer

the solution is easy  execute via sh      -exec sh -c  zcat      agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

I found that running a string shell command  sh -c  works best  for example   find -name  file    -follow -type f -exec bash -c  zcat          agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

The job of interpreting the pipe symbol as an instruction to run multiple processes and pipe the output of one process into the input of another process is the responsibility of the shell   bin sh or equivalent     In your example you can either choose to use your top level shell to perform the piping like so   find -name  file    -follow -type f -exec zcat         agrep -dEOE  grep    In terms of efficiency this results costs one invocation of find  numerous invocations of zcat  and one invocation of agrep   This would result in only a single agrep process being spawned which would process all the output produced by numerous invocations of zcat   If you for some reason would like to invoke agrep multiple times  you can do   find   -name  file    -follow -type f       -printf  zcat  p   agrep -dEOE  grep  n    sh   This constructs a list of commands using pipes to execute  then sends these to a new shell to actually be executed    Omitting the final    sh  is a nice way to debug or perform dry runs of command lines like this    In terms of efficiency this results costs one invocation of find  one invocation of sh  numerous invocations of zcat and numerous invocations of agrep   The most efficient solution in terms of number of command invocations is the suggestion from Paul Tomblin   find   -name  file    -follow -type f -print0   xargs -0 zcat   agrep -dEOE  grep        which costs one invocation of find  one invocation of xargs  a few invocations of zcat and one invocation of agrep

User · Answer

find   -name  file    -follow -type f -print0   xargs -0 zcat   agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

The job of interpreting the pipe symbol as an instruction to run multiple processes and pipe the output of one process into the input of another process is the responsibility of the shell   bin sh or equivalent     In your example you can either choose to use your top level shell to perform the piping like so   find -name  file    -follow -type f -exec zcat         agrep -dEOE  grep    In terms of efficiency this results costs one invocation of find  numerous invocations of zcat  and one invocation of agrep   This would result in only a single agrep process being spawned which would process all the output produced by numerous invocations of zcat   If you for some reason would like to invoke agrep multiple times  you can do   find   -name  file    -follow -type f       -printf  zcat  p   agrep -dEOE  grep  n    sh   This constructs a list of commands using pipes to execute  then sends these to a new shell to actually be executed    Omitting the final    sh  is a nice way to debug or perform dry runs of command lines like this    In terms of efficiency this results costs one invocation of find  one invocation of sh  numerous invocations of zcat and numerous invocations of agrep   The most efficient solution in terms of number of command invocations is the suggestion from Paul Tomblin   find   -name  file    -follow -type f -print0   xargs -0 zcat   agrep -dEOE  grep        which costs one invocation of find  one invocation of xargs  a few invocations of zcat and one invocation of agrep

User · Answer

the solution is easy  execute via sh      -exec sh -c  zcat      agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

If you are looking for a simple alternative, this can be done using a loop:

for i in $(find -name 'file_*' -follow -type f); do
  zcat $i | agrep -dEOE 'grep'
done

or, more general and easy to understand form:

for i in $(YOUR_FIND_COMMAND); do
  YOUR_EXEC_COMMAND_AND_PIPES
done

and replace any {} by $i in YOUR_EXEC_COMMAND_AND_PIPES

User · Answer

find   -name  file    -follow -type f -print0   xargs -0 zcat   agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

You can also pipe to a while loop that can do multiple actions on the file which find locates  So here is one for looking in jar archives for a given java class file in folder with a large distro of jar files  find  usr lib eclipse plugins -type f -name    jar   while read jar  do echo  jar  jar tf  jar   fgrep IObservableList   done   the key point being that the while loop contains multiple commands referencing the passed in file name separated by semicolon and these commands can include pipes  So in that example I echo the name of the matching file then list what is in the archive filtering for a given class name  The output looks like    usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse core contenttype source 3 4 1 R35x v20090826-0451 jar  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse core databinding observable 1 2 0 M20090902-0800 jar org eclipse core databinding observable list IObservableList class  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse search source 3 5 1 r351 v20090708-0800 jar  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse jdt apt core source 3 3 202 R35x v20091130-2300 jar  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse cvs source 1 0 400 v201002111343 jar  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse help appserver 3 1 400 v20090429 1800 jar  in my bash shell  xubuntu10 04 xfce  it really does make the matched classname bold as the fgrep highlights the matched string  this makes it really easy to scan down the list of hundreds of jar files that were searched and easily see any matches   on windows you can do the same thing with   for  R  j in    jar  do  echo  j  amp   jar tf  j   findstr IObservableList   note that in that on windows the command separator is   amp   not     and that the     suppresses the echo of the command to give a tidy output just like the linux find output above  although findstr is not make the matched string bold so you have to look a bit closer at the output to see the matched class name  It turns out that the windows  for  command knows quite a few tricks such as looping through text files     enjoy

User · Answer

the solution is easy  execute via sh      -exec sh -c  zcat      agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

the solution is easy  execute via sh      -exec sh -c  zcat      agrep -dEOE  grep

User · Answer

You can also pipe to a while loop that can do multiple actions on the file which find locates  So here is one for looking in jar archives for a given java class file in folder with a large distro of jar files  find  usr lib eclipse plugins -type f -name    jar   while read jar  do echo  jar  jar tf  jar   fgrep IObservableList   done   the key point being that the while loop contains multiple commands referencing the passed in file name separated by semicolon and these commands can include pipes  So in that example I echo the name of the matching file then list what is in the archive filtering for a given class name  The output looks like    usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse core contenttype source 3 4 1 R35x v20090826-0451 jar  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse core databinding observable 1 2 0 M20090902-0800 jar org eclipse core databinding observable list IObservableList class  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse search source 3 5 1 r351 v20090708-0800 jar  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse jdt apt core source 3 3 202 R35x v20091130-2300 jar  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse cvs source 1 0 400 v201002111343 jar  usr lib eclipse plugins org eclipse help appserver 3 1 400 v20090429 1800 jar  in my bash shell  xubuntu10 04 xfce  it really does make the matched classname bold as the fgrep highlights the matched string  this makes it really easy to scan down the list of hundreds of jar files that were searched and easily see any matches   on windows you can do the same thing with   for  R  j in    jar  do  echo  j  amp   jar tf  j   findstr IObservableList   note that in that on windows the command separator is   amp   not     and that the     suppresses the echo of the command to give a tidy output just like the linux find output above  although findstr is not make the matched string bold so you have to look a bit closer at the output to see the matched class name  It turns out that the windows  for  command knows quite a few tricks such as looping through text files     enjoy

User · Answer

find   -name  file    -follow -type f -print0   xargs -0 zcat   agrep -dEOE  grep

[linux] How do I include a pipe | in my linux find -exec command?

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