Re: find + xargs

["Bill Rugolsky Jr." <yyyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 05:20:26PM +0000, Geoff Clare wrote:
> I would like to suggest an addition to the standard to address the
> common problem of how to handle special characters in filenames
> when using find and xargs together.

I agree wholeheartedly.  Simply copying a user home directory
on a system with GUI-related hidden directories full of menu entries
containing spaces, newlines and other bothersome characters 
is a nightmare on systems without the GNU tools.

This was discussed on this list before; see the archives.
I'll reiterate what I said the first time:  any characters are
legal in filenames except '/' and NUL ('\0').  That NUL is the
appropriate separator is "obviously correct," and the common
tools (like sort) should support NUL as a separator/terminator.

Regards,

   Bill Rugolsky