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From: Rockinghorse Winner on 24 Dec 2009 20:28 What am I missing here? [8600:/home/rh]$ find . -iname *.mp3 find: paths must precede expression: 02_-_Moonlight.mp3 Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression] [8600:/home/rh]$ cd .. [8600:/home]$ find rh -iname *.mp3 ../rh/16_-_All_Of_My_Love.mp3 ../rh/104-dennis_wilson-friday_night.mp3 ../rh/112-dennis_wilson-end_of_the_show.mp3 ../rh/03_-_It's_Not_Too_Late.mp3 ../rh/01_-_Companion.mp3 ?? -- Powered by Linux 2.6.31.6-166 Fedora 12 In rotation: Pacific Ocean Blue (D. Wilson) 2.6.31.5-0.1 OpenSUSE "Hug your cat today" 2.6.24-16 Mint Elyssa
From: Moe Trin on 24 Dec 2009 21:39 On Thu, 24 Dec 2009, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.suse, in article <muadnZisCcijiKnW4p2dnAA(a)giganews.com>, Rockinghorse Winner wrote: >What am I missing here? > >[8600:/home/rh]$ find . -iname *.mp3 >find: paths must precede expression: 02_-_Moonlight.mp3 find . -iname \*.mp3 >find rh -iname *.mp3 Not exactly sure - it should barf the same way. You're seeing a shell expansion of the star character. Old guy
From: ray on 24 Dec 2009 22:43 On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:28:30 -0600, Rockinghorse Winner wrote: > What am I missing here? > > [8600:/home/rh]$ find . -iname *.mp3 try this: find . -iname "*.mp3" > find: paths must precede expression: 02_-_Moonlight.mp3 Usage: find [-H] > [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] > [expression] > > [8600:/home/rh]$ cd .. > > [8600:/home]$ find rh -iname *.mp3 > ./rh/16_-_All_Of_My_Love.mp3 > ./rh/104-dennis_wilson-friday_night.mp3 > ./rh/112-dennis_wilson-end_of_the_show.mp3 > ./rh/03_-_It's_Not_Too_Late.mp3 > ./rh/01_-_Companion.mp3 > > ??
From: David Bolt on 25 Dec 2009 05:04 On Friday 25 Dec 2009 02:39, while playing with a tin of spray paint, Moe Trin painted this mural: > On Thu, 24 Dec 2009, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.suse, in article > <muadnZisCcijiKnW4p2dnAA(a)giganews.com>, Rockinghorse Winner wrote: > >>What am I missing here? >> >>[8600:/home/rh]$ find . -iname *.mp3 >>find: paths must precede expression: 02_-_Moonlight.mp3 > > find . -iname \*.mp3 Or wrap the *.mp3 in quotes, as suggested by Ray. >>find rh -iname *.mp3 > > Not exactly sure - it should barf the same way. You're seeing > a shell expansion of the star character. The shell expands the * if there's a match. If not, it passes it to find as-is. So, as there's no mp3s in /home , there is no expansion and so that one works as expected. However, there do appear to be more than one in /home/rh and so the shell expands it to pass them all as arguments, and so the command fails. Regards, David Bolt -- Team Acorn: www.distributed.net OGR-NG @ ~100Mnodes RC5-72 @ ~1Mkeys/s openSUSE 11.0 32b | | openSUSE 11.2 32b | openSUSE 11.0 64b | openSUSE 11.1 64b | openSUSE 11.2 64b | TOS 4.02 | openSUSE 11.1 PPC | RISC OS 4.02 | RISC OS 3.11
From: Rob on 25 Dec 2009 07:55
houghi <houghi(a)houghi.org.invalid> wrote: > ray wrote: >> On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:28:30 -0600, Rockinghorse Winner wrote: >> >>> What am I missing here? >>> >>> [8600:/home/rh]$ find . -iname *.mp3 >> >> try this: >> find . -iname "*.mp3" > > That is indeed the way to do it with find. > > I never botherd to find out why, because it works if you do add the "" > around it. Even if someone would explain exactly why, I would most > likely not understand it anyway, it won't change anything and will > confuse more then resolve. Obviously that goes only for me. This means you have a fundamental misunderstanding about how wildcard filename expansion works in Linux and other Unix versions. Probably you come from the MSDOS world, where this works differently. It is properly explained in most shell manual pages. |