xargs Format output while cating files

Question

I am combining xargs with find and have a bunch of files which I want to cat

find something
A
B
C

Now I am doing

find something | xargs cat

I want to put Echo the name of the file and some display message between the cat outputs. I tried -t option but it displays all the commands on top. Is xargs the way to go here? If so how should I proceed?

Answer 1

Try:

find . -name something -exec echo "File:" {} \; -exec cat {} \;

This is safe even for files whose names contain spaces, newlines, or other difficult characters.

Example

Let's have these test files:

$ cat A
1
2
$ cat B
3
4
$ cat C
5
6

The command output looks like:

$ find . -name '[ABC]'  -exec echo "File:" {} \; -exec cat {} \;
File: ./B
3
4
File: ./C
5
6
File: ./A
1
2

How it works

• find . -name something

  This starts the find command with whatever options you like

• -exec echo "File:" {} \;

  For every file found, this prints File: followed by its name.

• -exec cat {} \;

  This prints the contents of the file.