first of misc questions....

[RW]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:53:26 -0700
Bill Campbell <freebsd at celestial.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 25, 2007, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> >On Wed, Apr 25, 2007 at 10:31:45PM +0200, Irsla wrote:
> >> On 4/25/07, Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >   find . -type f \( -mtime 6 -o -mtime 29 \) -print0 | xargs -0
> >> > vi
> >> >
> >> 
> >> what about the -exec option of find ? I always wonder why people
> >> don't use it.
> >
> >it's simpler but not necessarily as efficient.
> 
> How could it be as efficient as it executes the -exec for every thing
> that find finds? Xargs groups the output (except under rare
> circumstances where one might specify that it run the command for
> each argument).

This is one of those things that isn't actually true, but has been
repeated so many times that people have come to believe it. The -exec
option can be made to pass multiple arguments if it's used correctly.