Question

find . -name "filename including space" -print0 | xargs -0 ls -aldF > log.txt
find . -name "filename including space" -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rdf

Is it possible to combine these two commands into one so that only 1 find will be done instead of 2?

I know for xargs -I there may be ways to do it, which may lead to errors when proceeding filenames including spaces. Any guidance is much appreciated.

Answer 1

If you’re just wanting to avoid doing the find multiple times, you could do a tee right after the find, saving the find output to a file, then executing the lines as:

find . -name "filename including space" -print0 | tee my_teed_file | xargs -0 ls -aldF > log.txt
cat my_teed_file | xargs -0 rm -rdf 

Another way to accomplish this same thing (if indeed it’s what you’re wanting to accomplish), is to store the output of the find in a variable (supposing it’s not TB of data):

founddata=`find . -name "filename including space" -print0`
echo "$founddata" | xargs -0 ls -aldF > log.txt
echo "$founddata" | xargs -0 rm -rdf