support for longer argument lists with -X?

[githorse]

When I try to use -X on a giant argument list, it fails:

$ fd /giant/directory --type f -X stat 
[fd error]: Problem while executing command: Argument list too long (os error 7)

Ok, makes sense, since my argument list is 100k files long. But find -exec actually works here:

$ find . -type f -exec stat {} +
# seems to work

AFAIK the + means that all results are passed to stat, so it seems that stat actually supports argument lists that long. Or maybe find is batching them up somehow? Using find -exec + is way faster than find -exec \;, which passes them one-by-one, so it's doing something different for sure.

Would it be possible for fd to support (ridiculously) long argument lists as well?

[sharkdp]

Thank you for reporting this. Please see #410.

[sharkdp]

AFAIK the + means that all results are passed to stat, so it seems that stat actually supports argument lists that long. Or maybe find is batching them up somehow?

find is calling the external multiple times, if that is needed (if the argument list is too long). So yet, it's executing in batches. fd should do the same for -X.

Using find -exec + is way faster than find -exec \;, which passes them one-by-one, so it's doing something different for sure.

Exactly. -exec … + is like fds -X/--exec-batch. A normal -exec without the + is like fds -x/--exec. From my experience, -X is almost always what you want.

Counterexamples where you want -x/--exec:

• Commands that only support a single filename argument
• Cases where you want to profit from fds parallel command execution (e.g. long-running commands)