'find -exec' a shell function in Linux

Issue

Is there a way to get find to execute a function I define in the shell?

For example:

dosomething () {
  echo "Doing something with $1"
}
find . -exec dosomething {} \;

The result of that is:

find: dosomething: No such file or directory

Is there a way to get find‘s -exec to see dosomething?

Solution

Since only the shell knows how to run shell functions, you have to run a shell to run a function. You also need to mark your function for export with export -f, otherwise the subshell won’t inherit them:

export -f dosomething
find . -exec bash -c 'dosomething "$0"' {} \;

Answered By – Adam Rosenfield

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