Run a command on every file find matches

To run a command on each file find matches, use -exec with {} as the placeholder and a terminator.

The Fix

find . -name "*.log" -exec rm {} \;

For thousands of files, batch them into fewer invocations with + instead of \;:

find . -name "*.log" -exec rm {} +

Why {} and \; Are Needed

{} gets replaced with the matched file’s path. find needs a terminator to know where the -exec command ends, and ; is a shell special character, so it must be escaped (\;) or quoted (';'). Ending with + instead runs the command once with as many matched paths appended as fit, like xargs does, rather than once per file.

Gotchas

• An unescaped ; gets eaten by the shell before find ever sees it, producing find: missing argument to '-exec'.
• \; runs the command once per file (correct but slow for large trees). + batches them (fast), but only works if the command accepts multiple trailing arguments; rm does, not everything does.
• {} must come before the terminator: find . -exec cmd \; {} is invalid syntax, not just bad style.