bash: -exec in find command and &

Question

I want to run:

./my_script.py a_file &

... on all files in the current folder that end with .my_format, so I do:

find . -type f -name "*.my_format" -exec ./my_script {} & \;

but it doesn't work. How should I include & in the -exec parameter?

Answer 1

Try this:

$ find . -type f -name "*.my_format" -exec sh -c './my_script {} &' \;

The mostly likely reason your attempt didn't work is because find executes the command using one of the exec(3) family of standard c library calls which don't understand job control - the & symbol. The shell does understand the "run this command in the background" hence the -exec sh ... invocation

Answer 2

Try this find command:

find . -type f -name "*.my_format" -exec bash -c './my_script "$1" &' - '{}' \;