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From: jdpeek@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Jerry Peek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Doing more than one thing at once with find(1)
Message-ID: <2578@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
Date: 23 Mar 90 10:12:55 GMT
Sender: jdpeek@rodan.acs.syr.edu
Reply-To: jdpeek@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Jerry Peek)
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Lines: 23

I've been using UNIX for almost ten years, and I never realized that find(1)
could do more than one kind of operation as it works through a directory
tree.  It's in the man page, I guess, but I never figured it out...

For instance, if I was setting modes on a bunch of directories and files,
I'd do the directories with "find . -type d -exec chmod 700 {} \;"
then I'd do the files with  "find . -type f -exec chmod 600 {} \;".
(Well, actually, I use xargs(1) too, but that's another story.)
Tonight I found that this (long command line) does it all in one pass:

    $ find . \( -type f -exec chmod 600 {} \; \) -o \
	\( -type d -exec chmod 700 {} \; \) 

Even though I've found this, and it seems to work, I still don't
completely understand it.  It's sort of like trying to program the
Bourne shell just by reading the sh(1) man page. :-) [:-( ?]

How about some useful examples of this?  Post or e-mail, though
posting might help other unenlightened geeks like me. :-)
I'd be glad to summarize e-mail I get, if you ask.  Thanks...

--Jerry Peek; Syracuse University Academic Computing Services; Syracuse, NY
  jdpeek@rodan.acs.syr.edu, JDPEEK@SUNRISE.BITNET        +1 315 443-3995