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Help with decoding the 'find' command syntax

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# 1  
Old 08-01-2012
Help with decoding the 'find' command syntax
Hi folks,

I just want to understand what this find command does. The syntax "- - -" is cumbersome and unusual. Please let me know what it is for?

Code:
find - - - share/ ../share/ -type f  ! -path '*/CVS*'

# 2  
Old 08-01-2012
Please let us know what Operating System and version you have.
There is much variation in the find command, but I've never seen this one.
# 3  
Old 08-01-2012
It could be a folder literally named -, which find is being instructed to iterate through three times.

Naming a folder - is of course cumbersome and unusual, still, but CVS is known to make oddly-named folders sometimes.

Code:
$ mkdir ./-
$ touch ./-/asdf
$ find - - -
-
-/asdf
-
-/asdf
-
-/asdf

$

# 4  
Old 08-01-2012
It might be an obfuscated way of waking up a dodgy NFS automount? Is the filesystem containing the files an automounted NFS partition? Is this Solaris I wonder?
# 5  
Old 08-02-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by methyl
It might be an obfuscated way of waking up a dodgy NFS automount? Is the filesystem containing the files an automounted NFS partition? Is this Solaris I wonder?
It is Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client release 5.4 (Tikanga) and yes, it is NFS mounted.

---------- Post updated at 10:25 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:16 AM ----------

Quote:
Originally Posted by Corona688
It could be a folder literally named -, which find is being instructed to iterate through three times.

Naming a folder - is of course cumbersome and unusual, still, but CVS is known to make oddly-named folders sometimes.

Code:
$ mkdir ./-
$ touch ./-/asdf
$ find - - -
-
-/asdf
-
-/asdf
-
-/asdf

$

Thanks Corona688. But this seems to be not working, I am getting find: invalid predicate `-' error.

Also, what does this syntax say??
Code:
share/ ../share/

Last edited by royalibrahim; 08-02-2012 at 01:54 AM..
# 6  
Old 08-02-2012
that's two folders, one in the current directory, and one in a directory one up.
# 7  
Old 08-03-2012
... and the free-standing hyhens are also being treated as directories, whether or not they actually exist.
There has to be a better way of doing this which does not give error messages every time.
Not using the NFS automounter is one.
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