how to pipe output from find to pdf viewer

Question

Hello Bash Superheros,

I am trying to create a simple bash function that pipes the output from find to a a pdf viewer, similar but limited to evince.

function findpapers {
    find ~/papers/ -name *$1* | evince 
}

The above function opens the viewer but does not display any of the desired files/paths. Ultimately, I would like to display all the pdf's outputted from find. A simple find command such as:

$ find /home/alex/papers/ -name *erebus*

creates an output like:

/home/alex/papers/2000/rowe/seismic_and_acoustic_observations_at_mount_erebus_volcano_ross_island_antarctica.pdf

/home/alex/papers/2008/Jones/infrasonic_tracking_of_large_bubble_bursts_and_ash_venting_at_erebus_volcano_antarctica.pdf

Then the idea is to display those two pdf files in a viewer.

Any ideas or suggestions? I am using Linux Mint if that helps. Thanks heaps in advance!

Answer 1

You want the list of file names on the command line of evince, not in its standard input.

Use

evince $(find /home/alex/papers/ -name *erebus*)

or

find /home/alex/papers/ -name *erebus* | xargs evince

On linux (or any OS that uses the gnu versions of find and xargs) , if there is any chance the file names might contain spaces, better use

find /home/alex/papers/ -name *erebus* -print0 | xargs -0 evince

Answer 2

You should also be able to use

find /home/alex/papers/ -iname '*erebus*' -exec evince '{}' +

• iname tells find that the search pattern given is case insensitive.
• -exec executes the given command evince with the found filenames inserted for {}. The plus sign tells find to append all found filenames to a single evince command, instead of starting a new evince for each single found file. If you replace + with an escaped semicolon (\;), you get the latter behaviour.

Answer 3

If you are using bash 4 or later, you don't need find:

shopt -s globstar
evince /home/alex/papers/**/*erebus*