Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Message-ID: <42F510B1.947D717C@dessent.net>
Date: Sat, 06 Aug 2005 12:34:09 -0700
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: list Cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: Question about coreutils common option "-"
References: <20050806191127 DOT 35121 DOT qmail AT web30208 DOT mail DOT mud DOT yahoo DOT com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Spam-Report: -5.7/5.0 ---- Start SpamAssassin results  	* -3.3 ALL_TRUSTED Did not pass through any untrusted hosts 	* -2.6 BAYES_00 BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 0 to 1% 	*      [score: 0.0000] 	*  0.2 AWL AWL: From: address is in the auto white-list 	---- End SpamAssassin results
X-IsSubscribed: yes
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

Peter Farley wrote:

> I thought the following would produce "ls -l" output
> for the space-separated list of files selected by the
> "find" options, but instead I get an error message
> from "ls":
> 
> $ find a -daystart -type f -mtime 7 -printf " %p"|ls
> -l -
> ls: -: No such file or directory
> 
> The output from the "find" looks like this:
> 
> $ find a -daystart -type f -mtime 7 -printf " %p"
>  a/list.txt a/list_0002.txt

I've never heard of using '-' to ls this way.  The coreutils info page
does list it as a common flag, but my interpretation of the language
there is that it's only referring to programs that act as input/output
filters, not as a general-purpose way of passing filename arguments. 
That's why xargs exists.

You can get ls-like output from find without any other programs:

find a -daystart -type f -mtime 7 -ls

If you must use an external program, the usual way to take the output
from find and send it as arguments is with xargs:

find a -daystart -type f -mtime 7 | xargs ls -l

Note that both this and your '-printf " %p"' method will not work for
filenames that contain spaces or special characters.  Therefore the
superior way of doing this is:

find a -daystart -type f -mtime 7 -print0 | xargs -0 ls -l

> I do not have an *ix system on which to test if this
> is a Cygwin coreutils problem or a misunderstanding by
> me of the operation of the "-" option.  Can you please
> tell me if I am wrong about my use of the "-" option?

It doesn't work under linux either.  (It's the same coreutils code in
either case.)

Brian

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/