Post by @nik282000@lemmy.ca

@nik282000@lemmy.ca

2026-10-27 13:29 UTC

man find tells me that you should be using the -exec flag should be used if you want to do some operation on the files you find one at a time, using man to learn about a tool before you use it is also the Unix Way. (It also mentions the --delete flag as well as the gotchas that come along with using it). I will agree that for some complicated tasks that a lot of users might want to do a lot of times, for example downloading videos from YouTube, all encompassing tools are are good idea. yt-dlp has hundreds of functions to cover all the things a user might want to do, but even it relies on outside tools like ffmpeg to get the job done.

Replies (1)

@arty@feddit.org 2026-10-28 11:58

You actually support my point by referring to manuals. The manual for find is more that thousand lines of text. Should I read it before first use and memorize all the peculiarities forever? Or should I check it every time I use find to see if there are comments specific to the current scenario? Both alternatives seem complex. Remember how I am complaining about unnecessary complexity? When using an alternative in a programming language I don’t have to bother with all that: I get a file handle and pass it to delete method. Many commenters on the internet say “you should read the manual”. I doubt they follow this advice. I won’t take you as an example because you claimed no expertise. But whenever someone says these words, ask them to compare find -delete and find rm without looking into manual, see what they say.

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