Why?

Post #262,177 by drewk 7/19/06 1:38:24 PM Reply	Why? I'm guessing yours is looping through an array, all of which has to stay in memory simultaneously, while his iterates through a list of files with only one filename\|node in memory at a time. Am I close? === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #262,180 by admin 7/19/06 1:59:11 PM Reply	'find' starts a process for each iteration of exec Whereas the form that Mike used will collect all the filenames, then feed them to chmod at one time. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #262,182 by drewk 7/19/06 2:10:48 PM Reply	I don't follow I would expect if I watched `top` while Ben's is running, I'd see one instance of `find` and one instance of `chmod` that would live until everything was done. With Mike's I'd expect to see one instance of `find` which would finish as soon as the file list is created, and a new instance of `chmod` would appear for each file. So if process creation was the bottleneck, I'd expect Mike's to be faster. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #262,183 by admin 7/19/06 2:18:33 PM Reply	Exact opposite. find -exec chmod calls 'chmod somefile' for each file it finds. It has to, because it can't know how that particular executable works. In order to keep one around and use it, some sort of piping would be necessary. find \| xargs chmod will instead gather up all the file names, turn them into a single string via xargs, then pass that string as args to chmod. Run 'find . -type f \| xargs' sometime to see what it does. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #262,186 by ben_tilly 7/19/06 2:22:34 PM Reply	Not necessarily a single string xargs will break up long lists so that you fit inside the limits for the length of a command line. Cheers, Ben a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing. -- Warren Buffett
Post #262,187 by drewk 7/19/06 2:25:44 PM Reply	Okay, makes sense In my limited use of scripting, I must have gotten lucky in that I found piping more clear conceptually than calling `-exec` or other optional parameters on various commands. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]

Welcome to IWETHEY!