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From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Execute a command w/wildcards & recursive descent
Keywords: find lsr recursive descent
Message-ID: <1990Sep01.154949.16559@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 1 Sep 90 15:49:49 GMT
References: <13204@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 24

In article <13204@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt0178a@prism.gatech.EDU (BURNS,JIM) writes:
>Listed below is a 'C' program I wrote because I got tired of 'ls -R' and
>'find' not understanding wildcards, even if quoted. Can anyone tell me how
>to do something like

>find . -type d -exec 'general command with wildcards and {}' \;

Unless there is some requirement to do a single directory at a time you
could use:

find . -type f -name 'wildcard' -print | xargs command

xargs reads stdin for newline-delimited filenames and bundles them in
groups to pass on the command line to one or more executions of "command".
This is typically used to avoid the "argument list too long" problem
when you let the shell expand wildcards on an unknown number of files. 

Of course if the list will never exceed the shell command line buffer
and you know how deep the directory tree goes, you can just use:

command * */* */*/* (etc..)

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us