On Tue, Sep 26, 2000 at 10:26:04AM -0500, Dave Sherohman wrote: > On Tue, Sep 26, 2000 at 09:30:36AM -0500, dopp at acm.cs.umn.edu wrote: > > I think it would just be > > > > find . -type f | xargs grep pattern > > If you're using find, is there ant advantage to using xargs instead of find > handling the filenames itself? > > find . -type f -exec grep pattern {} \; > > (Well, OK... I guess my version is a few more keystrokes...) > Yes, using xargs in this case takes an itty-bitty fraction of the time it takes to exec out of find. The reason: find . -type f -exec grep pattern {} \; execs grep on _each_ file it finds, individually, where as find . -type f | xargs grep pattern execs grep on all the files collectively. You'd see something similar if you did find . -type f | xargs chmod 644 vs. find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;. THe latter would take orders of magnitude longer, while the former would happen in the blink of an eye. Just try it. Gabe -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gabe Turner | X-President, UNIX Systems Administrator, | Assoc. for Computing Machinery U of M Supercomputing Institute for | Univerisity of Minnesota Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation | dopp at acm.cs.umn.edu "My dinosaur droppings! Painted like Easter eggs!" - Ren Hoek in "Sven Hoek" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org