Execute a command on the results of find command

• execute the command multiple times on each individual result file:

  find . -type f -exec echo {} \;

  The result should look like:

  ./1
  ./3
  ./2

• execute the command only once on all result files:

  find . -type f -exec echo {} +

  The result should look like:

  ./1 ./3 ./2

Example: Remove .DS_Store and ._* files:

find . -type f -name '.DS_Store' -exec rm -f {} \;
find . -type f -name '._*' -exec rm -f {} \;

see also

• How to run find -exec

Count lines of Java source code

find . -type f -name "*.java" | xargs cat | grep [alnum{}] | wc -l

or shell script could be:

#!/bin/bash

[[ -z $1 ]] && dir=. || dir=$1

find $dir -type f -name "*.java" | xargs cat | grep [alnum{}] | wc -l