Home/ Questions/The best way to fix the valueerror:''find: missing argument to `-exec'''?
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clarissa
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Asked: 2022-07-03T04:45:28+00:00 In:

The best way to fix the valueerror:”find: missing argument to `-exec”’?

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I encounter the error ”find: missing argument to `-exec”’ when I’m trying to run this command:

find a/folder b/folder -name *.c -o -name *.h -exec grep -I foobar '{}' +

I don’t know what’s wrong with this command. And I also tried:

find a/folder b/folder -name *.c -o -name *.h -exec grep -I foobar {} +
find a/folder b/folder -name *.c -o -name *.h -exec 'grep -I foobar' {} +
find a/folder b/folder -name *.c -o -name *.h -exec 'grep -I foobar' '{}' +
find a/folder b/folder -name "*.c" -o -name "*.h" -exec grep -I foobar '{}' +
find a/folder b/folder \( -name *.c -o -name *.h \) -exec grep -I foobar '{}' +
find a/folder b/folder -name *.c -o -name *.h -exec grep -I foobar '{}' \+

I am looking forward to gaining some knowledge from all experts. Thank you, guys!

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1 Answer

  1. Best Answer
    Expert

    The cause: Your attempts had a number of problems, including:

    1. Backticks being used in place of quotes (which were later removed in edits to the question).
    2. Missing quotes where they should have been, extra quotes where they weren’t needed.
    3. Missing parentheses for group -o clauses.
    4. Different implementations of find used.

    Solution: The command can be simplified into the following:

    find a/folder b/folder -name "*.[ch]" -exec grep -I foobar {} +

    If you’re using an outdated GNU find version, this should always work as well:

    find a/folder b/folder -name "*.[ch]" -exec grep -I foobar {} \;
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