Xargs append string to files

Question

I have multiple text files in a directory. At the end I want to append a string.

Eg. List of text files in directory.

• a.txt
• b.txt
• c.txt

Command to get their path:

find -name "*txt"

Then I tried to send

'echo "example text" > <filename>

So I tried running the following:

find -name "*txt" | xargs echo "example_text" >>

This command fails.

All I want to is append some text to the files every now and then and since the names of the files keep changing I wanted to use xargs

Answer 1

Because >> is a shell directive, if you want it honored via xargs, you need to have xargs start a shell. As Shawn's answer demonstrates, in many cases a shell glob is enough and you don't need find at all; but if you do want to use find, it can be used correctly either with or without xargs.

---

If you insist on using xargs, even though it isn't the best tool for the job...

find . -name "*.txt" -print0 | xargs -0 sh -c '
  for arg in "$@"; do echo "example_text" >>"$arg"; done
' _

Taking xargs out, and just using find (with -exec ... {} + to get the same performance benefits xargs would otherwise offer):

find . -name "*.txt" -exec sh -c '
  for arg in "$@"; do echo "example_text" >>"$arg"; done
' _ {} +

(in both of the above, the _ substitutes for $0, so later arguments become $1 and later, and are thus iterated over when expanding "$@").

Answer 2

xargs isn't really appropriate here. Maybe a loop over filenames like

for file in *.txt; do
    echo "example_text" >>"$file"
done