[bug #60383] [feature-request] let find read files from stdin or file.

[Stephane Chazelas]

Follow-up Comment #11, bug #60383 (project findutils):

I very much welcome that new feature, as that at last fixes the long standing
issue that you can't pass arbitrary file paths to "find" (such as "-my-file-",
"(", "!" which you need to prefix with ./ as a work around, see also the
(clunkier to use) -f option of BSDs for that).

Now, I can do (in Korn-like shells):


find -files0-from <(printf '%s\0' "${files[@]}") ... -print0 |
  find -files0-from - ...


And be sure none of the files in the $files array will be taken as a find
option or predicate.

My only problem is that, when find is fed an empty list, we get a


find: file with starting points is empty: ‘(standard input)’


error (and a non zero exit status). I'd rather find not complained about it
there, just like when it doesn't find any file or when using xargs -r0.

I can work around it using moreutils' ifne command as in:


(( ${#files[@]} == 0 )) ||
  find -files0-from <(printf '%s\0' "${files[@]}") ... |
    ifne find -files0-from - ...


But I'd rather avoid that dependency on a non-GNU utility.

What do you think? Should I raise it as a separate bug here?

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