Bash shell script function gives “find: missing argument to `-exec'” error

Question

I wrote a function in a Bash shell script to search a Linux tree for filenames matching a pattern containing a regular expression, with colour highlighting:

function ggrep {
 LS_="ls --color {}|sed s~./~~"
 [ -n "$1" -a "$1" != "*" ] && NAME_="-iname $1" || NAME_=
 [ -n "$2" ] && EXEC_="egrep -q \"$2\" \"{}\" && $LS_ && egrep -n \"$2\" --color=always \"{}\"|sed s~^B~\ B~" || EXEC_=$LS_
 FIND_="find . -type f $NAME_ -exec sh -c \"$EXEC_\" \\;"
 echo -e \\e[7m $FIND_ \\e[0m
 $FIND_
}

eg ggrep a* lists all files starting with a under the current directory tree,

and ggrep a* x lists of files starting with a and containing x

When I run it, I get:

find: missing argument to `-exec'

even though I get the correct output when I copy and paste the line output by "echo" into the terminal. Can anyone please tell me what I've done wrong?

Secondly, it would be great if ggrep * x listed all files containing x , but * expands to a list of filenames and I need to use \\* or '*' instead. Is there a way around this? Thanks!

Answer 1

Terminate the find command with \\; instead of \\\\; .

find . -type f $NAME_ -exec sh -c \"$EXEC_\" \;

Answer 2

eval $FIND_

in the last line of the function body works fine for me.

Expansions in BASH are generally not recursive, so if you load a command from a variable, you should always use "eval" to enforce reprocessing the expanded variable as it was a fresh input. Normally quotes are not handled properly within a string that has already been expanded.

To your second problem, I think there is no satisfactory solution. The shell will always expand * before passing it to anything controlled by you. You can disable this expansion, but that is a global setting. Anyway, I think that this expansion could actually act in favor of your function. Consider rewriting it in a way that takes advantage of it. (I did not analyze whether the current version was close to that or not.)