Re: How to deal with space in command line?

[Sven Mascheck]

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 08:12:23AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 09, 2010 at 12:06:21AM +0200, Sven Mascheck wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 09:14:15AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > unset array
> > > while IFS= read -r -d '' f; do array+=("$f"); done \
> > >   < <(find . -name '*.c' -print0)
> > > vi "${array[@]}"
> 
> > As you mention -exec yourself, what about simply
> > 
> > find . -type f -name '*.c' -exec sh -c 'vi "$@"' find-sh {} +
> 
> > find . -type f -name '*.c' -exec vi {} +
> 
> If there is an absolute requirement to put *all* the files on a single
> command, "-exec +" may fail to satisfy it.  It might break up the files
> into groups.

Yes, but the same limit (ARG_MAX) gets hit, as soon as you call an external
command, like "vi "${array[@]}" in the example above.

If you can get by without any external command, then avoiding ARG_MAX is a
noteworthy advantage of shell-only handling (loops + variables).