Faster Finds with the xargs Command
Turbocharger
© Lead Image © rouslan, 123RF.com
If you're processing a group of files in a single command pipe, the xargs tool just might save you some precious execution time.
Everyone is familiar with the classic problem of finding a string of text in a mass of files. You could approach this problem in a naive way by simply using grep and a parameter set (Listing 1, first line). But be aware that this approach often ends with the error shown in the second line of Listing 1. Houston, we have a problem: There are too many files in the target folder for grep to pass them as parameters in Bash.
Another option is find. If you take a quick look at the man page for the find tool, you will soon encounter the -exec parameter. This approach involves find passing the current search results to the command after -exec, represented by a pair of curly brackets (Listing 1, last line). A final semicolon, which you need to escape with a backslash, guarantees that find will detect the end of the -exec argument.
This approach does solve the problem, but at a price. What happens here is slow and, above all, wasteful. For each search result, find has to start its own grep process, irrespective of whether the search term that you want grep to find even exists in the file.
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