Use xargs to mv a directory from find results into another directory

Question

I have the following command:

find . -type d -mtime 0 -exec mv {} /path/to/target-dir \\;

This will move the directory founded to another

Answer 1

With BSD xargs (for OS X and FreeBSD), you can use -J which was built for this:

find . -name some_pattern -print0 | xargs -0 -J % mv % target_location

That would move anything matching some_pattern in . to target_location

With GNU xargs (for Linux and Cygwin), use -I instead:

find . -name some_pattern -print0 | xargs -0 -I % mv % target_location

The deprecated -i option of GNU xargs implies -I{} and can be used as follows:

find . -name some_pattern -print0 | xargs -0 -i mv {} target_location

Note that BSD xargs also has a -I option, but that does something else.