Here is how to run a command on one file at a time.
Execute command; true if command returns zero. find
takes all arguments after ‘-execdir’ to be part of the command until
an argument consisting of ‘;’ is reached. It replaces the string
‘{}’ by the current file name being processed everywhere it
occurs in the command. Both of these constructions need to be escaped
(with a ‘\’) or quoted to protect them from expansion by the
shell. The command is executed in the directory which find
was searching at the time the action was executed (that is, {} will
expand to a file in the local directory).
For example, to compare each C header file in or below the current directory with the file /tmp/master:
find . -name '*.h' -execdir diff -u '{}' /tmp/master ';'
If you use ‘-execdir’, you must ensure that the PATH
variable contains only absolute directory names. Having an empty
element in PATH or explicitly including ‘.’ (or any other
non-absolute name) is insecure. GNU find will refuse to run if you
use ‘-execdir’ and it thinks your PATH setting is
insecure. For example:
Insecure; empty path element (at the end)
Insecure; empty path element (at the start)
Insecure; empty path element (two colons in a row)
Insecure; ‘.’ is a path element (. is not an absolute file name)
Insecure; ‘sbin’ is not an absolute file name
Secure (if you control the contents of those directories and any access to them)
Another similar option, ‘-exec’ is supported, but is less secure. See Security Considerations, for a discussion of the security problems surrounding ‘-exec’.
This insecure variant of the ‘-execdir’ action is specified by
POSIX. Like ‘-execdir command ;’ it is true if zero is
returned by command. The main difference is that the command is
executed in the directory from which find was invoked, meaning
that ‘{}’ is expanded to a relative path starting with the name
of one of the starting directories, rather than just the basename of
the matched file.
While some implementations of find replace the ‘{}’ only
where it appears on its own in an argument, GNU find replaces
‘{}’ wherever it appears.