RE: Weird behavior with find command when tarring files

Thanks for the tip, I didn’t know about -print0. Is this option generally available on older Unix (hpux, aix, solaris)? I have been using double quotes in most of my code for a couple years around file variables in anticipation of being able to run on Windows environments. Have not dare tested that yet however.  

One other thing to note here. Be really careful with xargs. I believe it executes on null input too. I don’t recall the exact issue but I have been burned at least twice and good enough to recall you need to be very careful with it if you are deleting or modifying things. Also stay away from “find .” and make sure you try to use a full path there. This is all obvious maybe and only used here for the sake of examples but throwing it out there for the newbies if any are reading.  

Ethan Post

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanraypost/

https://arclogicsoftware.com

https://twitter.com/poststop    

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> On Behalf Of Jared Still Sent: Friday, October 26, 2018 1:49 AM
To: Hameed, Amir <Amir.Hameed_at_xerox.com> Cc: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Re: Weird behavior with find command when tarring files  

In addition to the other fine comments, you should get in the habit of dealing with filenames that have spaces.  

It seems impossible to anymore to avoid this, as you don't always have control over it.  

Here's how: use the '-print0' option for find, and the '-0' option for xargs.  

find . type f -mmin +239 -print0 | xargs -0 tar -cvf /tmp/test.tar    

Jared Still
Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist

Principal Consultant at Pythian

Pythian Blog http://www.pythian.com/blog/author/still/

Github: https://github.com/jkstill    

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