Hi all,

Is it possible to have multiple -exec's in a single command? lets say i want to gzip up some files that i have found using the find command, and then somehow extract the contents of the gzip file i just created into another folder.

have you tried it? just have a go... (the answer is yes btw) not sure if that's really going to help you with what you're describing though.

yea i have tried it. can't get it to work though for some reason...

well you can use multiple exec's easily, but they will work in total isolation on a per command basis, e.g. you might echo the name of the matched file to a log, and then also add it to an archive, but there's no sense of aggregation over the files or anything. you say you want to extract the entire contents of a single archive, well that's not going to be done by processing it on a per file basis unless you explicitly extract each file. sure there are many ways odd things make sense when you know the whole story, but that's never going to make sense!

There are several functions you can use to string together multiple commands in one command line action. The most common one is the pipe "|", which feeds the output from one command into the input of the next. I'd use that instead of multiple -exec functions. Use find to generate a list of files you want to zip up and then pipe it into gzip. Then follow up with a semicolon separator to run a second command to extract them elsewhere.

Open up "man bash" and read the section on shell grammar. Also check out some of the many online shell scripting tutorials, such as LinuxCommand.org, where you can learn a lot about using the shell in general as well. With a little work you can become comfortable with the command line in no time. ^o^