find command

[john guardian]

The cmd:

find / -exec ls -l {} \;

will provide the output I'm looking for, but if I want to send output to screen AND a file OR just to a file, what would that syntax be?

Thx in advance...

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

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@john guardian wrote:

find / -exec ls -l {} \;

will provide the output I'm looking for, but if I want to send output to screen AND a file OR just to a file, what would that syntax be?

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Hi:

Use 'tee' to send the ouput to your terminal and a file:

# find / -exec ls -ld {} + | tee /var/tmp/myoutput

Notice that I also changed your 'ls -l' to 'ls -ld'.  THis is because you will do an 'ls -l' on *both* files and directories otherwise leading to duplicated output.

Notice too that the '\;' terminator for '-exec' means that you spawn one process for every argument!   This will really drag your perfomance down.  Using '{} +' causes mutiple arguments to be assembled for every process instantiation.  This is akin to using 'xargs' and greatly improves performance!

Regards!

...JRF...

[Dennis Handly]

>if I want to send output to screen AND a file OR just to a file, what would that syntax be?

Why?  You just redirect the output to a file and put the find(1) in the background and do something else.  If you are thinking about using tee(1), don't.

find / -exec ls -ld {} + > find-output 2>&1

Then you can use "tail -f" or other commands while it is working.

>This is akin to using 'xargs' and greatly improves performance!

It is orders of magnitude better than xargs(1), assuming large start up costs as with ll(1).