On Sat, Nov 12, 2016 at 11:57 PM, 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <jida...@jidanni.org> wrote: > Gentlemen,
Many of us are not gentlemen, of course! > just like the SQL language has a "LIMIT" operator It also has ORDER BY, which is why LIMIT is useful. > so also does find need a -limit (and xargs a --limit) option. For cases where only one result is expected (such as -inum, sometimes, or "find plain-file-name -ls") there is -quit. > You might ask can't one just use e.g., > $ find|sed 3q What is the use case answered by this command? To retrieve an arbitrary (though not random) selection of three results? > $ some_command|sed 3q|xargs ... > > and e.g., > $ find -print0 | perl -0nwe 'print; exit if $. == 3;' | xargs -0 ... > if needing to use nulls. > > Well yes one can, but > 1. at least give the null example on the man pages. > 2. wouldn't it be much more efficient if the commands stopped output > themselves? Like > $ find -limit 3 -print0 | xargs -0 ... > or > $ any_command | xargs --limit 3 > -- -- This email is intended solely for the use of its addressee, sender, and any readers of a mailing list archive in which it happens to appear. If you have received this email in error, please say or type three times, "I believe in the utility of email disclaimers," and then reply to the author correcting any spellings (and, optionally, any incorrect spellings), accompanying these with humorous jests about the author's parentage. If you are not the addressee, you are nevertheless permitted to both copy and forward this email since without such permissions email systems are unable to transmit email to anybody, intended recipient or not. To those still reading by this point, the author would like to apologise for being unable to maintain a consistent level of humour throughout this disclaimer. Contents may settle during transit. Do not feed the animals.
