Search code examples
linuxshellgnu-coreutils

Echo text to multiple files using find


I'd like to add some simple text into some files. Specifically, I do this on Linux lpfc drivers:

ls -1 /sys/class/scsi_host/host* | awk -F '@' '{system("echo 0x0 > "$1"/lpfc_log_verbose")}'

But thinking about common case I need to handle spaces in file names. Thus I turned to find:

find -L /sys/class/scsi_host -nowarn -maxdepth 2 -type f -name 'lpfc_log_verbose' -exec echo 0x0 > {} \; 2>/dev/null

But this seems not working.

find -L /sys/class/scsi_host -maxdepth 2 -type f -name 'lpfc_log_verbose' -exec cat {} \; 2>/dev/null

is fine but shows my edit didn't success. So can we use redirect in find -exec? What is the correct work-around?


Solution

  • So can we use redirect in find -exec?

    No, because the > {} is handled by Bash before invoking find. Technically, instead of running

    find ... -exec echo 0x0 > {} ...
    

    you could run

    find ... -exec bash -c 'echo 0x0 > {}' ...
    

    but I think it's simpler to write:

    for dir in /sys/class/scsi_host/host* ; do
        echo 0x0 > "$dir"/lpfc_log_verbose
    done
    

    (which — fear not — does handle spaces and newlines and control characters).