xargs doesn't recognize bash aliases

Question

I\'m trying to run the following command:

find . -iname \'.#*\' -print0 | xargs -0 -L 1 foobar

where \"foobar\" is an alias or function def

Answer 1

I usually use find like this:

find . -iname '' -exec cmd '{}' \;

'{}' will get replaced with the filename, and \; is necessary to terminate the execution chain. However, if that doesn't work with your function, you might need to run it through bash:

find .. |sed -e "s/.*/cmd '&'/"|bash

Find prints each file on a line, sed just prefixes this with your command, and then pipe it to bash for execution. Skip the |bash first to see what will happen.