Why this find -L ... fgrep fails?

Question

I moved away from Ubuntu to Debian, and having a problem with my find now for searching tex files for the word masi. Code and its output

masi@masi:~$ find -L "/home/masi/" -xtype f \
    -name "*.tex" -exec fgrep -l 'masi' {} + /dev/null

find: paths must precede expression: /dev/null
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]

/dev/null is necessary in the second command set because we are using find -L, since we want to include all symlinks and go them through and not exclude anything in the search. Thread where the motivation for the use here about How to Avoid Many Levels of symlinks with this find?

As one-liner

find -L "/home/masi/" -xtype f -name "*.tex" -exec fgrep -l 'masi' {} + /dev/null

OS: Debian 8.5
Linux kernel: 4.6 of backports
Hardware: Asus Zenbook UX303UA
Related: find command of my haetex script in the thread How to search .tex files?
Find: find (GNU findutils) 4.4.2
Fgrep: grep (GNU grep) 2.20

What exactly is that `/dev/null` in the end supposed to mean? — Byte Commander, Sep 27 '16 at 19:11
Also, your `fgrep` invocation is missing the search string. Should be something like `fgrep -l 'some string' {} +`. I can't understand what the `/dev/null` is supposed to do here. — Munir, Sep 27 '16 at 19:13
It must be `2>/dev/null` in the end to hide stderr messages. — Byte Commander, Sep 27 '16 at 19:21

Gilles Quénot · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-27T19:48:27.080

2

Just:

find -L /home/masi/ -xtype f -name "*.tex" -exec fgrep -l 'masi' {} +

no need /dev/null as far as {} is the place holder for the processed file(s)

If you try to hide the error output, use it like this :

command 2>/dev/null

edited Sep 27 '16 at 19:48

answered Sep 27 '16 at 19:21

Gilles Quénot

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In my case, there is a need of `/dev/null` but change it only to `2>/dev/null`. – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Sep 27 '16 at 19:25
1

I just try to guess your misstake ;) – Gilles Quénot Sep 27 '16 at 19:47

Why this find -L ... fgrep fails?

1 Answers1