Find -exec Dry Run?

execfind

Is there a way to see what the result of a find . -exec somecommand {} \; would be with substitutions, without actually running the commands? Like a dry run (or test run or print)?

For example, suppose I have the following file structure:

/a/1.txt
/a/2.txt
/a/b/3.txt

Is there a way to test find . type f -exec rm {} \; from within the a directory such that the output would printed to stdout but not executed such as:

rm 1.txt
rm 2.txt
rm b/3.txt

Update
Note: rm is just an example command, I'm interested in the general case

Best Answer

You can run echo rm instead of rm

find . type f -exec echo rm {} \;

Also, find has -delete option to delete files it finds

Related Solutions

Bash – can I do : find … -exec this && that

-exec is a predicate that runs a command (not a shell) and evaluates to true or false based on the outcome of the command (zero or non-zero exit status).

So:

find . -iname '*.csv' -exec grep foo {} \; -print

would print the file path if grep finds foo in the file. Instead of -print you can use another -exec predicate or any other predicate

find . -iname '*.csv' -exec grep foo {} \; -exec echo {} \;

See also the ! and -o find operators for negation and or.

Alternatively, you can start a shell as:

find . -iname '*.csv' -exec sh -c '
   grep foo "$1" && echo "$1"' sh {} \;

Or to avoid having to start a shell for every file:

find . -iname '*.csv' -exec sh -c '
  for i do
    grep foo "$i" && echo "$i"
  done' sh {} +

How to find first match in multiple files

Just use the -m option of GNU grep which stops reading the file after (in the example) one match.

find dir -iname '*.ext' -exec grep -m 1  'pattern' {} \;

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash – can I do : find … -exec this && that

How to find first match in multiple files

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