From: Stefan Walk <stefan.walk@...>
Date: 2005-12-27T23:47:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Found a neat trick for doing recursive one-liners

Pat Maddox wrote:
> Or you can use the tools designed for finding stuff :)
> 
> find . -name "*.txt" | xargs grep Hello
> 
> That version will work for all files.  You can play with find to match
> any file you want.
> 
> Pat
> 

et@adel:/tmp/rb$ touch 'foo bar.txt'
et@adel:/tmp/rb$ find . -name "*.txt"
../foo bar.txt
et@adel:/tmp/rb$ find . -name "*.txt" | xargs grep Hello
grep: ./foo: No such file or directory
grep: bar.txt: No such file or directory
et@adel:/tmp/rb$ find . -name "*.txt" -print0 | xargs -0 grep Hello
et@adel:/tmp/rb$

Watch out if you are using xargs. It can get pretty nasty, especially if 
there is not grep at work, but rm or alike.

Shooting yourself in the foot 101:
$ touch "foo .. bar -rf moo.o"
$ find . -name '*.o' | xargs rm
*BAM*

If you are using find and xargs, always use -print0 and -0, respectively.

Regards,
Stefan