[ILUG] Disadvantages of find -exec?

[Kae Verens]

Josh Glover wrote:
 > 2009/1/13 Braun Brelin <bbrelin at gmail.com>:
 >
 >> A few days ago I saw a thread regarding find where someone stated that using
 >> find with -exec was a bad idea and to use -xargs instead.
 >> Can someone give me some opinions as to what specifically is the drawback of
 >> -exec with find?  Just curious.
 >
 > The main one that I can see is that -exec spawns a new process for
 > each file, whereas xargs spawns one process for as many files as the
 > shell can handle (have you ever seen your shell tell you that the
 > command is too long?).
 >
 > Any other drawbacks that people know of?

isn't that an "apples or oranges"?

I mean, you suggest that -exec is bad because it spawns a load of processes
but xargs could potentially simply not work.

drawbacks on both sides.

kae