Code:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 600

find . -type f

On bash, I would like to pass the search result of "find" to another command as well as to the standard output. The above code performs the same search twice -- once for "xargs -0 chmod" and another for stdout. I would like to spare this redundancy. I would like to search only once and would like to use the search result for another command and reuse it for the standard output.

Assume that the null character (0x00) is the only character that filenames never contain. Thus, assume that filenames may contain newline (0x0A) characters. In the above code, -print0 and -0 options specify the separator to be a null character.

If I allow myself to use a file to save the search result, then the work can be accomplished in the following manner.

Code:

find . -type f -print0 > /tmp/found.dat
cat /tmp/found.dat | xargs -0 chmod 600
cat /tmp/found.dat | tr \\0 \\n

However, I do not want to use a file to save the search result. So, I tried a variable to save the search result.

Code:

vFound="$(find . -type f -print0)"
echo "$vFound" | xargs -0 chmod 600
echo "$vFound" | tr \\0 \\n
#or 
#printf %s "$vFound" | xargs -0 chmod 600
#printf %s "$vFound" | tr \\0 \\n

However, the above code failed. It seems that bash removes null characters when bash expands the variable.

I also tried "tee" to make an attempt to split the search result to "xargs -0 chmod" and stdout. The following attempt with "tee" failed.

Code:

find . -type f -print0 | tee - | xargs -0 chmod 600

Can you show me how to use the search result of "find" for another command and reuse it for the standard output without saving the search result to a file? I failed in a method with a variable and a method with "tee".

Many thanks in advance.