[dev] Why not use the -exec feature of find?

From: Greg Reagle <list_AT_speedpost.net>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2021 08:26:40 -0400

All over the place (tutorials, manuals, articles, questions and answers) I see the advice to use the null feature of find (-print0) and xargs (-0) to be able to handle any kind of wacky file name (e.g. filenames with newlines). Granted, *if* you are going to pipe find into xargs, the advice makes sense. But wouldn't it be better in every way to use the -exec (or -execdir) feature of find instead of piping into xargs? Why isn't that the common advice? Is the -exec feature of find fairly new, or fairly new to Posix?
Received on Tue Jun 22 2021 - 14:26:40 CEST