How can I use xargs to copy files that have spaces and quotes in their names?

Question

I\'m trying to copy a bunch of files below a directory and a number of the files have spaces and single-quotes in their names. When I try to string together find

Answer 1

Frame challenge — you're asking how to use xargs. The answer is: you don't use xargs, because you don't need it.

The comment by user80168 describes a way to do this directly with cp, without calling cp for every file:

find . -name '*FooBar*' -exec cp -t /tmp -- {} +

This works because:

• the cp -t flag allows to give the target directory near the beginning of cp, rather than near the end. From man cp:

   -t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY
         copy all SOURCE arguments into DIRECTORY

• The -- flag tells cp to interpret everything after as a filename, not a flag, so files starting with - or -- do not confuse cp; you still need this because the -/-- characters are interpreted by cp, whereas any other special characters are interpreted by the shell.

• The find -exec command {} + variant essentially does the same as xargs. From man find:

   -exec command {} +                                                     
         This  variant  of the -exec action runs the specified command on
         the selected files, but the command line is built  by  appending
         each  selected file name at the end; the total number of invoca‐
         matched  files.   The command line is built in much the same way
         that xargs builds its command lines.  Only one instance of  `{}'
         is  allowed  within the command, and (when find is being invoked
         from a shell) it should be quoted (for example, '{}') to protect
         it  from  interpretation  by shells.  The command is executed in
         the starting directory.  If any invocation  returns  a  non-zero
         value  as exit status, then find returns a non-zero exit status.
         If find encounters an error, this can sometimes cause an immedi‐
         ate  exit, so some pending commands may not be run at all.  This
         variant of -exec always returns true.

By using this in find directly, this avoids the need of a pipe or a shell invocation, such that you don't need to worry about any nasty characters in filenames.