What does {} \; mean

Question

I found the following very useful command on this site:

find -type f -name '*.bz2' -execdir bzgrep "pattern" {} \;

But I don't understand what the {} \; means, can anyone explain?

Thanks

possible duplicate of [Simple unix command, what is the {} and \; for](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/447048/simple-unix-command-what-is-the-and-for) — Reinstate Monica Please, Mar 06 '15 at 04:17

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '15 at 10:12

2

Placeholders in find.

{} denotes 'whatever you found'.

; means end of statement. The \ lets find see it, without the shell interpolating it.

It's often considered sensible to use '{}' (e.g. with single quotes) because the shell will interpolate {}.

answered Mar 05 '15 at 10:12

Sobrique

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What do you mean by `the shell will interpolate {}`? Which `shell`? – Reinstate Monica Please Mar 06 '15 at 04:33
Without quotes, a filename with a space of special character might do something odd. – Sobrique Mar 06 '15 at 08:25
The quotes will get processed before `find`. The only way it would matter would be if some shell considered `{}` to mean something special (in which case `''` would likely preserve the literal `{}`), but I'm not aware of any that do. – Reinstate Monica Please Mar 07 '15 at 03:13

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

-execdir bzgrep "pattern" {} \;
  ^      ^        ^       ^  ^^
  |      |        |       |  ||
  |      |        |       |  |end of the execdir flag
  |      |        |       |  |
  |      |        |       |  shell escape
  |      |        |       |
  |      |        |       2. argument to bzgrep
  |      |        |       {} is substituted with the current filename
  |      |       1. argument to bzgrep
  |      |
  |    the command to run
execute a command

i.e. for each file that find finds, it runs bzgrep where {} is substituted with the file name.

The ; is needed to end the -execdir, so you can e.g. have other flags to the find command after it. the \ is used to escape the ;, since a ; on the shell would otherwise be interpreted as a command separator (as in e.g. the oneline cd /etc ; ls -l). Single quoting the ; would also work, ';' instead of \; - at least in bash.

Or as the manpage sayes:

-exec command ;

Execute command; All following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting of ‘;’ is encountered. The string ‘{}’ is replaced by the current file name being processed

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 05 '15 at 10:14

1

{} is the filename find found ant to substituted in the exec(dir) command.
\; is end of command given after execdir. You need the backslash, since it is not used to show the end of the complete unix command (find).

answered Mar 05 '15 at 10:14

Walter A

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What does {} \; mean

3 Answers3