find's man page has some god-awful examples:
> find . -type f -exec file '{}' \;
>
> Runs `file' on every file in or below the current directory. Notice
> that the braces are enclosed in single quote marks to protect them
> from interpretation as shell script punctuation. The semicolon is
> similarly protected by the use of a backslash, though single quotes
> could have been used in that case also.
{} needs to be quoted
> find repo/ -exec test -d {}/.svn \; -or \
> -exec test -d {}/.git \; -or -exec test -d {}/CVS \; \
> -print -prune
but {}/.svn doesn't
> find /sbin /usr/sbin -executable \! -readable -print
let's escape ! here for no reason
> find . -perm -444 -perm /222 ! -perm /111
> find . -perm -a+r -perm /a+w ! -perm /a+x
but not here because logic
> find . -name .snapshot -prune -o \( \! -name *~ -print0 \)|
> cpio -pmd0 /dest-dir
surely *~ doesn't need to be quoted
> NON-BUGS
> $ find . -name *.c -print
> find: paths must precede expression
> Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D
> help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]
>
> This happens because *.c has been expanded by the shell
> resulting in find actually receiving a command line like this:
>
> find . -name bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c -print
>
> That command is of course not going to work. Instead of doing
> things this way, you should enclose the pattern in quotes or
> escape the wildcard:
> $ find . -name '*.c' -print
> $ find . -name \*.c -print
oh wait apparently wildcards should be quoted or escaped
please fix these, they're embarassing.
--
xoxo iza
