Yessir, saw the reply. Was just wanting to learn the why of the reason not to use ls. I used to be semi-proficient in linux, so I'm probably a dangerous mix of knowing too much and not having enough experience.

Also, tasteless bump of the USB boot post I put up this morning.

@all: If I understand what you mean, how about my above command?

Basically: it's definitely quick, and if one doesn't mind all the errors/warnings produced, then I guess it would do. But IMHO it's not optimal:

Though I should mention: when you try to do things on files in /proc and /sys and sometimes /dev, weird results can occur whatever method is being used. I just re-tested my own method, and got an I/O Error from a file in /proc/

Luckily we have MANY ways to choose from, when doing stuff like this in Linux, but it looks wise to skip over /proc in this case.

Sasha

Look at the newsgroup title. My method takes longer to execute, but it is easier for a newbie to understand and to modify.

Methods using "xargs" are often the source of endless threads in this discussion forum because its syntax is beyond the comprehension of Linux newcomers. To me, the point is not to overwhelm newbies with breathtakingly incomprehensible syntax, but to provide accessible, modifiable methods.

It's the "one-liner" disease, and it is a disease. One-liners are by definition a bad way to explain something. Should we make the computer happy, or should we try making the newbies happy?

That's because you haven't tried the alternatives yet, and discovered all the ingenious ways they have of failing.

I would argue that having to learn the syntax of a loop is as difficult as learning to read a single command; both have a learning curve associated with them.This is partly why I didn't use xargs. Keeping it all in find makes it easier to understand, from my perspective, because there's no need to learn about pipes.Whilst that's obviously a laudable aim, there's also some mileage in showing them different approaches, and where some of the limitations of certain methods occur, and why.I find that when the computer's happy, I'm happy. There's nothing more frustrating than waiting for the computer to finish doing something.

Originally Posted by lutusp:
To me, the point is not to overwhelm newbies with breathtakingly incomprehensible syntax, but to provide accessible, modifiable methods.

Indeed, that's a good thing to keep in mind; laudable. Luckily, at least as far as this particular thread goes, there's nothing "breathtakingly incomprehensible" about any of the methods suggested.

Cheers,
Sasha

And they are hard to debug whereas step-by-step code allows easy inspection of intermediate results.

Absolutely; this obsession with one-liners is a PITA if it ever makes it into production code.