find -exec command works on Debian Squeeze but not Ubuntu 10.04

Question

In a shell script (interpreter /bin/bash), the following works on Debian Squeeze:

find ~/bin/ '!' -type d -exec dos2unix {} \;

Now, I know that for some reason that dos2unix was renamed to fromdos in Ubuntu, so I'm trying to run:

find ~/bin/ '!' -type d -exec fromdos {} \;

Whilst this works on Debian, on Ubuntu it yields the output:

fromdos: Unable to access file todos.
fromdos: Unable to access file fromdos.

How do I get around this, and what is the problem?

Answer 1

On my Ubuntu system, /usr/bin/{{to,unix2}dos,dos2unix} are all symlinked to fromdos.

Try type -a fromdos to see if there's an alias, function or script that's overriding the binary in /usr/bin.

Also, try specifying the full path in your find command:

find ~/bin/ '!' -type d -exec /usr/bin/fromdos {} \;

Check to see if there's a broken symlink in your ~/bin directory. Are there any symlinked directories in ~/bin?

The error message you're getting looks like fromdos is trying to process a file called "fromdos".