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4.1 Viewing And Editing

To view a list of files that meet certain criteria, simply run your file viewing program with the file names as arguments. Shells substitute a command enclosed in backquotes with its output, so the whole command looks like this:

     less `find /usr/include -name '*.h' | xargs grep -l mode_t`

You can edit those files by giving an editor name instead of a file viewing program:

     emacs `find /usr/include -name '*.h' | xargs grep -l mode_t`

Because there is a limit to the length of any individual command line, there is a limit to the number of files that can be handled in this way. We can get around this difficulty by using xargs like this:

     find /usr/include -name '*.h' | xargs grep -l mode_t > todo
     xargs --arg-file=todo emacs

Here, xargs will run emacs as many times as necessary to visit all of the files listed in the file todo.