Re: add find -limit, xargs --limit

[James Youngman]

On Sat, Nov 12, 2016 at 11:57 PM, 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <address@hidden> 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
>



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