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Full Discussion: xargs vs exec with find:
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting xargs vs exec with find: Post 302671841 by Tribe on Saturday 14th of July 2012 06:03:44 PM
Old 07-14-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by alister
Keep in mind that if the size/number of the matching filenames exceeds what can be passed to tar in one invocation, that will silently revert to the original problem, of tar clobbering the archive generated by the previous iteration.

For archiving files found with find, pax or cpio are much more convenient than tar, since they can read the list on stdin.

Regards,
Alister
Exactly, there is a problem if the number of txt existing files exceed the maximum number of arguments that can be handled. For example this will fail on my system:

Code:
for i in {1..50000}; do echo >  file-$i.txt ; done
find ./ -type f -name "file-*.txt" -exec tar -cf txtarchive.tar {} + ;

There are 50000 txt files in dir:
Code:
find ./ -name "file-*.txt" | wc -l
50000

While in the tar there are only 3138 and no error was shown:
Code:
tar -tf txtarchive.tar  | wc -l
3138

-----------
On the other hand, independent exec with find for each argument is terribly slow when the number of arguments is high.

Could you provide examples with pax or cpio?
Last edited by Tribe; 07-14-2012 at 07:12 PM..
 

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LEARN ABOUT ULTRIX

crontab

crontab(5)							File Formats Manual							crontab(5)

Name
       crontab - clock daemon table file

Syntax
       /usr/lib/crontab

Description
       The  command  executes  at  specified dates and times according to the instructions in the file. The file consists of lines with six fields
       each.  The format for a line is as follows:

	      minute hour day month weekday command

       The following list defines each field in the line:

       minute (0-59)  The exact minute that the command sequence executes.

       hour (0-23)    The hour of the day that the command sequence executes.

       day (1-31)     The day of the month that the command sequence executes.

       month (1-12)   The month of the year that the command sequence executes.

       weekday (1-7)  The day of the week that the command sequence executes. Monday = 1, Tuesday = 2, and so forth.

       command	      The complete command sequence variable that is to be executed.  Note that the command string must conform  to  Bourne  shell
		      syntax.

       The first five integer fields may be specified as follows:

       o   A single number in the specified range

       o   Two numbers separated by a minus, meaning a range inclusive

       o   A list of numbers separated by commas, meaning any of the numbers

       o   An asterisk meaning all legal values

       The sixth field is a string that is executed by the shell at the specified times.  A percent sign (%) in this field is translated to a new-
       line character.	Only the first line of the command field, up to a percent sign (%) or end of line, is executed by the  shell.	The  other
       lines are made available to the command as standard input.

Examples
       The following example is part of a file:
       # periodic things
       0,15,30,45 * * * * (echo '^M' `date`; echo '') >/dev/console
       0,15,30,45 * * * * /usr/lib/atrun

       # daily stuff
       5 4 * * * sh /usr/adm/newsyslog
       15 4 * * * ( cd /usr/preserve; find . -mtime +7 -a -exec rm -f {} ; )
       20 4 * * * find /usr/msgs -mtime +21 -a ! -perm 444 -a ! -name bounds
	    -a -exec rm -f {} ;

       # NOTE: The above line is wrapped.

       # local cleanups
       30 4 * * * find /usr/spool/mqueue -type f -mtime +5 -name df-exec rm {} ;
       35 4 * * * find /usr/spool/mqueue -type f -mtime +5 -name tf-exec rm {} ;
       40 4 * * * find /usr/spool/rwho -type f -mtime +21 -exec rm {} ;
       #

       # redirecting error output
       0 17 * * 1,3,5 /bin/tar -cv /usr/sysads/smith > /dev/console 2>&1
       #

Files
See Also
       sh(1), cron(8)
       Guide to System Environment Setup

																	crontab(5)
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