On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 05:28:04PM -0700, Tyler Regas wrote: >> The main reason I posted it is that people often don't think to use xargs >> which is one of the more useful programs around, far more efficient than >> find's -exec argument which is often overused. > >What are the benefits of using xargs as opposed to the -exec option? Take >this from the POV of a guy who doesn't spend much time in the CLI :)
Primarily that it doesn't exec the command for each file, but groups them together. These two commands should do the same thing, but the second will only exec the grep command a few times while the first will do it for every file (the exec format may not be correct since I rarely use it). find . -type f -exec 'grep -l pattern {} \;' > /tmp/list find . -type f -print | grep -l pattern > /tmp/list >> The beauty of mailing lists like this is that there are often pearls >> amongst the discussion of politics and other OT stuff. In particular I had >> forgotten the ctrl-alt-esc sequence in X-windows which allows one to nuke >> any window, and have used it several times in the last few days when I had >> frozen windows (opera6 in downloads mostly). > >You are very correct. I personally use xkill as its not dependant on a key >sequence, but then I use a nasty mix of KDE and GNOME with a rather complex >Mac-like keyboard shortcut set <G>. I think that the ctrl-alt-esc uses xkill. Bill -- INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way FAX: (206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676 URL: http://www.celestial.com/ ``The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.'' -- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188 _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list - http://linux.nf/mailman/listinfo/linux-users Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL.