find question

[Ionut Grigorescu_2]

Hi all,

when I'm running find as a normal user in csh I get the error message:
find: cannot open xxxx
find / -name filename -print 2>/dev/null returns me the error:
missing conjunction
any idea?

[curt larson_1]

qoute your wildcard characters

[Pete Randall]

Ionut,

Interesting - I just tried it with ksh and got no errors.


Pete

[Pete Randall]

Ionut,

Actually, I just switched to csh and got no errors, either. Strange!


Pete

[Justo Exposito]

Hi,

Put:

find / -name "filename" -print
or
find / -name 'filename' -print

Regards,
Justo.

[John Palmer]

Hi,

It sounds as though you are including wildcard characters (? or *) in filename.

When you do that you either have to quote the whole string, something like:

find . -name "wild*card"

or 'quote' the wildcard character:

find . -name wild\*card

Regar

[John Palmer]

Hi,

It sounds as though you are including wildcard characters (? or *) in filename.

When you do that you either have to quote the whole string, something like:

find . -name "wild*card"

or 'quote' the wildcard character:

find . -name wild\*card

Regards,
John

[Helen French]

Missing conjunction error normally appears when you specify -name option without a quot:

# find ..options ...-name 'filename' -print

[Tim D Fulford]

One or more thinks may be confusing the issue/wrong!!

1 - You MUST be using ksh or sh otherwise the 2>/dev/null will fail. If you are using csh or tcsh then 2>/dev/null will not help (no such thing as std err in C-shell)
2 - No need for the -print, but it will not hurt
3 - put a backslash before wild cards

Regards

Tim

[Ionut Grigorescu_2]

It doesn' work!! On all machines I have tried is the same. I always re-direct the output to a file I delete after, cause I cannot get rid of the cannot open xxxx messages. with ksh is ok but in csh is always the same problem!

[Tim D Fulford]

cannot oper xxxx means no permissions on that dir...

Tim

[Pete Randall]

Ionut,

How about a work-around then:

find / -name filename -print |grep -v 'cannot'


Pete

[Pete Randall]

Ionut,

Disregard, that doen't work.


Pete

[john korterman]

Hi,
as already said, C-shell does not have any redirection control of standard error. Hence C-shell does not understand the "2>"??; it believes this to be an option to the "find" command.
I think it will correspond this in sh:
# find . -name plut -print 2
which will produce a similar error message.

regards,
John K.

[Michael Kelly_5 · Accepted solution]

Ionut,
run your find command in a subshell like this:
(find / -name filename >`tty`) >&/dev/null

HTH,
Michael.

[Ionut Grigorescu_2]

Thanx a lot Michael - that was the right one!
case closed