Linux – How to remove files containing whitespace recursively

Use find for recursive searches:

find -name '*.doc' -exec catdoc {} + | grep "specificword"

This will also output the file name:

find -name '*.doc' | while read -r file; do
    catdoc "$file" | grep -H --label="$file" "specificword"
done

_{(Normally I would use find ... -print0 | while read -rd "" file, but there's maybe a .0001% chance that it would be necessary, so I stopped caring.)}

You would be better off using the -exec action (option) of find and quoting your arguments.

Example:

find . -type f -exec grep stuff '{}' \;

The quotes will keep the spaces from being interpreted and you don't have to pipe everything through xargs unnecessarily.

From the find man page:

-exec command ;

Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting of  ‘;’  is encountered. The string  ‘{}’  is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere it occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in arguments where it is alone, as in some versions of find.  Both of these constructions might need to be escaped (with a  ‘\’) or quoted to protect them from expansion by the shell. See the EXAMPLES section for examples of the use of the -exec option. The specified command is run once for each matched file. The command is executed in the starting directory.

There are unavoidable security problems surrounding use of the -exec action; you should use the -execdir option instead.