UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I would like to loop through a set of directories, performing operation(s) on each one. The basic script** is

dirs=`find . -name .svn -print`

for f in $dirs; do
echo "Processing $f directory .."
done

Fine and dandy, but here is the problem: the find expression must complete before the do ... done begins. The find process is relatively slow. I would like to have the do .. done work on entries as they are appended to the list. So in essence there are two threads, the find works in the background, and the do consumes $dirs until empty.

How would the do .. done loop "know" that the $dirs is still being populated? Maybe this needs to be changed completely using another method.

Thanks in advance.



** Some of you will recognize the ".svn", as Subversion stores additional copies of data on the local machine in ".svn" directories.

Enter the pipe:

Code:

find . . . | while read d
do
 . . .
done

or better yet, if cmd can do the process, like rm or fgrep or the like:

Code:

find . . . | xargs -n999 'cmd'

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