Xargs: Missing quote

mellowjen · 02-27-2007, 11:05 AM

Hello,

I'm trying to run this program:

find . -name "*.html" -type f | xargs grep -ls 'string'

but it crashes with the error:
xargs: Missing quote: (filename)

The file name has a single quote in it (which is ridiculous but that's another topic altogether).

Is there any way to get around this? Essentially, I am trying to search an entire directory and all it's files and subfolders that include a certain string all the while suppressing an errors.

Thanks!

tread · 02-27-2007, 11:25 AM

Try:

Code:

find . -name "*.html" -type f -print -exec grep -ls 'string' {} \;

Not on linux at the moment, so cant confirm myself.

mellowjen · 02-27-2007, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tread

Try:

Code:

find . -name "*.html" -type f -print -exec grep -ls 'string' {} \;

Not on linux at the moment, so cant confirm myself.

Thanks for your reply but it seems that this is listing every .html file within the directory but not searching for "string" within those files. But no errors.

jr1 · 02-27-2007, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mellowjen

Thanks for your reply but it seems that this is listing every .html file within the directory but not searching for "string" within those files. But no errors.

The example tread gave should be grep'ing in each .html file, but it also lists the name of every .html that is found, which you probably don't want. Each matching file will be listed twice in the output (once each by find and grep), and each non-matching file will be listed once (by find). I'd suggest getting rid of find's -print option.

cfaj · 02-27-2007, 06:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mellowjen

Hello,

I'm trying to run this program:

find . -name "*.html" -type f | xargs grep -ls 'string'

but it crashes with the error:
xargs: Missing quote: (filename)

The file name has a single quote in it (which is ridiculous but that's another topic altogether).

Is there any way to get around this? Essentially, I am trying to search an entire directory and all it's files and subfolders that include a certain string all the while suppressing an errors.

Thanks!

Use NUL to terminate file names:

Code:

find . -name "*.html" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -ls 'string'

Dark_Helmet · 02-27-2007, 06:29 PM

This worked fine on my system:

Code:

find . -name "*.html" -type f -printf '"%p"\n' | xargs grep -ls 'string'

EDIT:
That command assumes none of your files have a double quote in them. If you do, then you'll run into similar problems as you did originally (mismatched quotes).