Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Karsten Behrmann <BearPerson AT gmx.net>]

I agree that xargs is pretty nice when you're handling a giant bunch of files.
But I have not found many applications for that in sorcery yet.
grep 'regexp' $(find -type f)
would be my command of choice as long as it is only <50 files
> No, xargs is almost ALWAYS better. Read-on and you'll see why!
> 
> Consider the common case of grepping all files in a tree. The solution most 
> people use is:
> 
>   find . -type f -exec grep 'regexp' /dev/null "{}" ;
> 
> but this is hideously inefficient. A separate grep is fork()'d and exec()'d 
> for every single file. Eek!!! Note also the quotes around the {} to cope 
> with 
> files with spaces in them.
> 
> By contrast:
> 
>   find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep 'regexp'
> 
> (a) looks easier on the eye
> (b) is WAAAAYY more efficient!
> 
> A grep is forked/execed for every 32 worth of argument (and environment) 
> space. 
> 
> If there's only one file found, then it's only marginally less efficient 
> than 
> the first example - you have the overhead of the xargs process.