I was trying to find all symbolic links in /usr/lib and use file on the first entry in the list, which I delimited with head -n 1.
Why does find /usr/lib -maxdepth 1 -type l | file $(head -n 1) work but find /usr/lib -maxdepth 1 -type l | head -n 1 | file does not?
It complains that I am not using file correctly. Probably because it lacks an argument, but - programmatically/syntactically - why can’t file grab it’s argument from the pipe?
Your syntax is fine, but not all commands/programs accept input from the pipe, or more accurately from stdin. Looking at the man page for file (https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/file.1.html) I can’t see a stdin option, so you have to pass each of the files from your
headoutput as arguments to file.Thanks! Yeah, I just came to the realization that this was more about my lack of understanding of the file command than anything else.
I learned this the hardway with ffmpeg… In my defense… Their documentation IS huge !!!
Kinda interested if
2>&1would also work in this case?2>&1pipes stderr to stdout, which would not affect a binary like file which doesn’t parse stdin. You would need something likexargs filewhich would convert the stdout to command line arguments.Thanks for the clarification :)) still new the all the bash syntax and always interested to hear what more skilled people have to say !