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cipher7836

08-14-2009 10:58 AM

Piping Output of a Command Like Find

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 (Post 3643433)

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 (Post 3644020)

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 (Post 3644194)

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 (Post 3644265)

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 (Post 3644339)

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 :eek:

Wim Sturkenboom

08-16-2009 01:38 AM

pixellany, thanks

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

The solution for me would have been

Code:

grep hello < `find . -name abc*`

hello

:::	08-16-2009 03:41 AM

xargs

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.

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