Question

There’s this line I want to use in a ksh script :

find . -type f -exec echo "{} $comment" | awk '{printf "%-30s %s", $1, $2}' \;

Without the awk, this line is working great :

find . -type f -exec echo "{} $comment" \;

When I added the awk to make columns, I had this error :

awk: fatal: cannot open file `;' for reading (No such file or directory)
find: missing argument to `-exec'

I don’t find the good syntax. Do you, guys, have any idea ?
Thanks !

Answer 1

There a 2 things that I actually cannot understand.

1. What is \; stand for?

2. What is - for in printf "%-30s %s", $1, $2?

Anyway, try that.

$> find . -type f -exec echo "{} $comment" \; | awk '{printf "%30s %s\n", $1, $2}'