I have a question to this command
find . -type f -name ".*txt" -exec grep "text" {}\.
The find command will locate a file name with the extension of txt once per round and find the word "text" in the content of the file or the find command will locate all the file names with the extension of txt and then find the word "text" in the content of the files?
Also what does {}\ represent for grep command?
Reference:
-exec command ;
Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until an
argument consisting of `;' is encountered. The string `{}' is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere it
occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in arguments where it is alone, as in some versions of find. Both of these con-
structions might need to be escaped (with a `') or quoted to protect them from expansion by the shell. See the EXAMPLES section
for examples of the use of the -exec option. The specified command is run once for each matched file. The command is executed in
the starting directory. There are unavoidable security problems surrounding use of the -exec action; you should use the -execdir
option instead.
-exec command {} +
This variant of the -exec action runs the specified command on the selected files, but the command line is built by appending each
selected file name at the end; the total number of invocations of the command will be much less than the number of matched files.
The command line is built in much the same way that xargs builds its command lines. Only one instance of `{}' is allowed within the
command. The command is executed in the starting directory.
Very simple example using ;
find / -exec grep hello {} \;
the \; symbols terminate the -exec statement.
FWIW, I tend to always terminate with the semicolon in day-to-day practice.
Hi
I understand that the question is purely academic.
But if we consider the practical application, then this command is completely redundant.
grep -r 'text' --include=*.txt .
I wanted you to know that just in case.
But I can also assume that you need to find only the names of the files containing the search string.
grep -rl 'text' --include=*.txt ./
--- Post updated at 09:57 ---
If at the end put +
then the "grep" command will immediately process all the files found by the "find" command,
and will not process each individually.
find . -type f -name "*.txt" -exec grep "text" {} +
I also thought you had an error in the file name pattern, I fixed
--- Post updated at 10:02 ---
Hi @Neo
I did not notice about "+" and repeated. I apologize