Question

I can do this:

$ find . . ./b ./b/foo ./c ./c/foo 

And this:

$ find . -type f -exec cat {} \; This is in b. This is in c. 

But not this:

$ find . -type f -exec cat > out.txt {} \; 

Why not?

Answer 1

find’s -exec argument runs the command you specify once for each file it finds. Try:

$ find . -type f -exec cat {} \; > out.txt 

or:

$ find . -type f | xargs cat > out.txt 

xargs converts its standard input into command-line arguments for the command you specify. If you’re worried about embedded spaces in filenames, try:

$ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 cat > out.txt