Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

75%
+4 −0
Q&A How to run a command on a list of files?

If I just used find to generate a list of files, then find's -exec argument is usually the way to run some other program on each file found. If you pipe the command to xargs, note that -P n wi...

posted 1y ago by dsr‭  ·  edited 1y ago by AdminBee‭

Answer
#2: Post edited by user avatar AdminBee‭ · 2023-06-20T18:52:22Z (over 1 year ago)
Minor improvement to formatting (all text belonging to one bullet stays indented, code formatting for literal command and option names), use more accessible names for the example programs in question
  • * If I just used find to generate a list of files, then find's -exec argument is usually the way to run some other program on each file found.
  • If you pipe the command to xargs, note that `-P n` will run up to n commands in parallel. The best value of n will depend on the relative usage of your CPU and your storage system.
  • * If I have a program that generates a list of files,
  • `for filename in $(program); do otherprogram "$filename" ; done `
  • is usually helpful. Make sure you quote your use of `$filename` -- more of them have spaces than you'd think.
  • * If I just used `find` to generate a list of files, then find's `-exec` argument is usually the way to run some other program on each file found.
  • If you pipe the command to `xargs`, note that `-P n` will run up to _n_ commands in parallel. The best value of _n_ will depend on the relative usage of your CPU and your storage system.
  • * If I have a program (say, `generate_lists`) that generates a list of files,
  • ```lang-bash
  • for filename in $(generate_lists); do some_program "$filename" ; done
  • ```
  • is usually helpful. Make sure you quote your use of `$filename` -- more of them have spaces than you'd think.
#1: Initial revision by user avatar dsr‭ · 2023-06-15T11:47:27Z (over 1 year ago)
* If I just used find to generate a list of files, then find's -exec argument is usually the way to run some other program on each file found.

If you pipe the command to xargs, note that `-P n` will run up to n commands in parallel. The best value of n will depend on the relative usage of your CPU and your storage system. 

* If I have a program that generates a list of files,

`for filename in $(program); do otherprogram "$filename" ; done `

is usually helpful. Make sure you quote your use of `$filename` -- more of them have spaces than you'd think.