Linux commands - piping commands

Question

I tried the following command find ~/dir1 *.m4a | play

Directory dir1 has exactly 1 m4a file in it and I'd like it to be played Yet I get a usage error from play. Why?

Answer 1

What you wrote instructs the output of the find command (an m4a file) to be send over as the input to the next command, play.

Now, I have no idea what that play exactly is, but most likely, it's syntax is of the type:

play filename

But what you wrote translates to:

play < "filename"

So, what you probably want to do is use a command like xargs, which will do exactly that:

find ~/dir1 *.m4a | xargs play

Which results in:

play foundfile1 foundfile2 ...

Answer 2

May be play don't use STDIN so you have to use xargs

 find ~/dir1 \*.m4a |xargs play