[bug #18554] feat req: -exec cmd {} more args +

[Egmont Koblinger]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?18554>

                 Summary: feat req: -exec cmd {} more args +
                 Project: findutils
            Submitted by: egmont
            Submitted on: Tuesday 12/19/2006 at 12:58
                Category: find
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 4.2.29
           Fixed Release: None

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Details:

Currently find refuses to have command line options between {} and +. This
way the filenames found by "find" can only be put at the end of the argument
list.

If you want to copy or move some files, the "cp" and "mv" commands just
happen to have a --target-directory option so that you can use an unusual
order, specify the target first and the source files later. I think these
were added to support using cp or mv with xargs or find -exec {} +.

There are other utilities, such as scp, rsync and probably a whole lot more
that do not have this option, they require the target directory to be the
last option. Currently they can't really be used in combination with find.

So please add support for having extra arguments between {} and +. As I see,
this wouldn't cause ambiguity or other problems when parsing the command
line. When an -exec or -execdir is seen, first "find" should look for the
next ';' or '+' argument. When it is found and it is a '+', it should check
that there's exactly one '{}' before that. Checking whether the constructed
command line would be too long is easy too; this time it doesn't matter if
these extra args are at the end or at the beginning, they can be taken into
account at once.





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