UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hi,
Under the home directory, I want to search for all the *.xml files and move them all into another folder under home.

Is it possbile using a single find command .



Regards,
Chirayu Sutaria

Try something like

Code:

find /home -name '*.xml' -exec cp \{\} /home/somedir \;

Hi,
Thanks for a lightning quick response.
However, Please explain what does cp \{\} signify

Regards,
Chirayu Sutaria

The -exec part specifies the command to execute by the find(1) command. cp is the command used to copy files (if you want to move instead of copy, use mv instead). The manpage tells you that the command string has to be terminated by a ; token. That's why at last there is a \; (has to be escaped because the shell recognizes ; as the end of a shell command and thus the semicolon itself will not be passed to find(1)). The command portion in full is thus

cp \{\} /home/somedir

The find(1) manpage says {} will be expanded to the filename resulting from the find before invoking the command specified. Again we need to escape them because they are used by the shell as well.

Hi,
Thanks , It was really very very guiding...


Regards,
Chirayu Sutaria

curious what kinda os are you useing cbkihong?
on solaris8 and aix 4.3.3 you do not need to escape the {}.

Linux + bash

EDIT: It seems like indeed {} neither needs to be escaped in bash. But seeing them escaped in examples in one of my linux security books, I followed the author's advice nevertheless.