command line parameters separated by null character

Question

As filenames may contain spaces and new lines \n, I am using null character as field separator. But I do not know how to say to find that the input directories are null character separated.

My failed attempt:

foo()
{
  IFS='\0'
  find "$@"
}

$ mkdir 'oneword' 'two words'
$ IFS='\0' foo $(realpath -z 'oneword' 'two words')

How to tell find that the input directories are separated by zeros?

konsolebox · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-15T15:08:45.343

One way is to use xargs:

realpath -z 'oneword' 'two words' | xargs -0 find

Or:

foo() {
  local A=() I=0 IFS=''
  while read -rd $'\0' A[I++]; do :; done 
  find "${A[@]}"
}
realpath -z 'oneword' 'two words' | foo  ## Under subshell or pipe
foo < <(realpath -z 'oneword' 'two words')  ## No subshell

You can use another fd if needed:

foo() {
  local A=() I=0 IFS=''
  while read -rd $'\0' -u 4 A[I++]; do :; done 
  find "${A[@]}"
}
foo 4< <(realpath -z 'oneword' 'two words')

Note: Using IFS to split your variable's values to multiple arguments can cause pathname expansion and is not commendable. It requires modification of IFS as well which could affect other functions.

command line parameters separated by null character

1 Answers1