sed: can't read : No such file or directory

Question

I am running the following command:

find . -name '*.html' -exec sed "s/foo/bar/g" {} \;

where the file structure looks like this:

./two/three.html
./two/two.html
./two/one.html
./three/three.html
./three/two.html
./three/one.html
./one/three.html
./one/two.html
./one/one.html

However, sed comes back saying the files could not be found, even though these two commands work fine on their own (i.e. I can run a find by itself, and I can run sed by itself fine).

I had a peer look at it with me, and he was stumped also. I ended up going a different route, but I'd still like to know what exactly is going wrong here.

What if you remove the `-print` part? To me it looks unnecessary. — fedorqui, Mar 28 '14 at 14:54
`print` will print the name of the file before `sed` does the action. Probably something that OP wants. — jaypal singh, Mar 28 '14 at 14:55
assuming you're really using `sed -i` to "save In-place", else where is the output going in your example. I think @fedorqui is onto something. Good luck. — shellter, Mar 28 '14 at 14:56
I added -print to make sure it was hitting the files. When I remove it, I get the same results. — Zac Lozano, Mar 28 '14 at 16:21
Possibly the unquoted braces are a problem. Try: `-exec sed 's/foo/bar/g' '{}' \;` — glenn jackman, Mar 28 '14 at 19:03
To wrap up the question, you might as well post an answer, so others can benefit — glenn jackman, Mar 31 '14 at 13:47

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 31 '14 at 14:19

4

Thanks to glenn jackman for the advice:

I needed to place quotes around the brackets as such:

-exec sed "s/foo/bar/g" '{}' \;

Rather than how I initially posted it.

answered Mar 31 '14 at 14:19

Zac Lozano

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sed: can't read : No such file or directory

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