Re: shell game

[Frank Gevaerts <frank@gevaerts.be>]

On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 12:13:11PM -0700, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Frank Gevaerts <frank@gevaerts.be> [2002-12-07 19:58:00 +0100]:
> > On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 11:47:54AM -0700, Bob Proulx wrote:
> > > You are trying to find files in a directory.  Therefore I recommend
> > > you use the 'find' command.
> > > [..contrived.example...]
> > >   mp3playlist=$(find . -name '*.jpg' -print)
> > >   for mp3 in $mp3playlist; do
> > >     mpg123 $mp3
> > >   done
> > 
> > Why not just 
> > find . -name \*.jpg -exec mpg123 {} \;
> > ?
> > 
> > Much shorter, and no problems with number of arguments...
> 
> I was only proposing the mpg123 as an example.  I really don't know
> what the OP wanted to do with it.

IIRC he wanted to know if there was at least one jpg file in the
directory.

> You are right that using find's exec and {} avoids the file with
> spaces problem.  But instead I would use this if I wanted to play
> every file.
> 
>   find . -name '*.jpg' -print0 | xargs -r0 mpg123

Any special reason not to use -exec (except of course that xargs works
with any input, while -exec only with find (obviously))

> 
> > However, be careful with find. If you do not want to search
> > subdirectories, it is probably not what you want.
> 
> Not true!  Check out the -maxdepth option.  This only searches one
> directory deep.  The second only operates on the command line files.
> 
>   find . -name '*.jpg' -maxdepth 1 -print0 | xargs -r0 mpg123
>   find *.jpg -maxdepth 0 -print0 2>/dev/null | xargs -r0 mpg123

Yes indeed. I need to sleep more.

Maybe we should change the examples to feed .mp3 files to mpg123
instead of .jpg files...

Frank

> Bob