Piping Output of a Command Like Find

cipher7836 · 08-14-2009, 10:58 AM

I want to search for a particular file. However, once that file is found I want a long listing of it to see it's permissions. If I do something like this: "find / -name whatever | ls -l" it just gives me the result of "ls -l". What am I doing wrong?

paulsm4 · 08-14-2009, 11:02 AM

Here's one option:

Quote:

find . -name MYFILE -exec ls -l {} \;

pixellany · 08-14-2009, 12:26 PM

A pipe works only where the command is expecting an input. ls does not expect an input, so it ignores what you are sending it.

jschiwal · 08-14-2009, 01:05 PM

Another option is to use `xargs'. Since a name might contain white space, that needs to be taken into account.
find . -name FILENAME -print0 | xargs -0 ls -l

There is an "ls" command in find, so this would be easiest:
find . -name FILENAME -ls

Wim Sturkenboom · 08-14-2009, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pixellany

A pipe works only where the command is expecting an input. ls does not expect an input, so it ignores what you are sending it.

ls can use input (options, specific directory, specific file) so I doubt this is the reason it does not work
grep definitely needs input and it will also not work when it receives data piped from the find command

What am I missing from your post?

pixellany · 08-15-2009, 02:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wim Sturkenboom

ls can use input (options, specific directory, specific file) so I doubt this is the reason it does not work
grep definitely needs input and it will also not work when it receives data piped from the find command

What am I missing from your post?

I don't think you missed anything---there is obviously something I don't understand.....

Are you saying you cannot pipe the output of find to **anything**?

If a command produces output, does it even know that it is being piped?

pixellany · 08-15-2009, 02:13 AM

Quote:

grep definitely needs input and it will also not work when it receives data piped from the find command

Works here......so does SED.

Trying to pipe something to ls: Tried echo <string>|ls---does not work.

I am beginning to think I might have been more right than wrong......

Wim Sturkenboom · 08-15-2009, 05:21 AM

Below an old issue that I encountered long ago with find. Somebody suggested paulsm4's solution (post #2) to overcome the problem. That is why I'm wondering what is going on after reading your post.

Code:

[user@localhost Documents]$ cat abc.txt
hallo
hello
[user@localhost Documents]$ find . -name abc*
./abc.txt
[user@localhost Documents]$ find . -name abc* |grep hello
[user@localhost Documents]$ grep hello *
abc.txt:hello
[user@localhost Documents]$

PS. Taken from a Linpus Lite machine

catkin · 08-15-2009, 06:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wim Sturkenboom

Below an old issue that I encountered long ago with find.

What's the issue? It's working as I'd expect unless I am the stick wrong end having.

pixellany · 08-15-2009, 08:17 AM

Code:

[user@localhost Documents]$ find . -name abc* |grep hello

grep is working on file names.

----

Code:

[user@localhost Documents]$ grep hello *
abc.txt:hello

grep is working on file contents.

pixellany · 08-15-2009, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by catkin

unless I am the stick wrong end having.

Yoda's version of the English translation of an Indian colloquialism??....

catkin · 08-15-2009, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pixellany

Yoda's version of the English translation of an Indian colloquialism??....

Origins lost in history but the only suggested origin found that carries any sense of misunderstanding (as opposed to simply being disadvantaged) is in the last paragraph here about a botched Christening. Definitely from British English but surely both Lucas and the Rishis could develop it nicely. I hope this is not enough to have us banished to General

Wim Sturkenboom · 08-16-2009, 01:38 AM

pixellany, thanks

I think that the dime has finally fallen; it took about 10 years

The solution for me would have been

Code:

grep hello < `find . -name abc*`
hello

::: · 08-16-2009, 03:41 AM

probably the easiest would be using "xargs". xargs executes a command on every file in a list of file read from the standard input, thus input can be piped to it.

Code:

find /dir -name example.txt | xargs ls -l

this command looks for a file named "examples.txt" in the directory "/dir" and all its subdirectories recursivly. if it finds a file "examples.txt" it executes the command "ls -l" on it.