Putting echo output as input to stat

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I have a string with escape differentiators as a result of searching for a file using find. Essentially find returned to my shell variable several absolute paths each ending with the file name and each path/file separated by \n.

Echo recognizes the escape sequence and is able to print the paths to the screen. I tried to instead send the full escape sequence string form echo into stat but I was propmpty suggested to try --help.

This is what I tried:

echo $file_path | stat -c %F

I need a filename or something don't I?

2

Most well-written unix utilities accept stdin as a valid input usually like this

echo "thing" | command -

The trailing - means 'read from stdin'

Unfortunately the stat command line utility does not do this, at least the one from coreutils3.3 does not. Try it if you have a newer version.

3

xargs can understand find's output pretty much natively, and run a command you specify. No need to convert the newlines into escape sequences and back.

find -print0 /path/to/files | xargs --null stat -c %F
4

Corona, and those replying, I appreciate the assistance. Xargs is a utility that I will keep in my back pocket from now on. I used it successfully as follows:

 find / -name "$file_name" -print0 2> /dev/null | xargs --null stat -c %F

This small piece of code allows me to acquire the file type inode info on any number of files