find command exec option

Question

I'm trying to use the + option of find exec instead of xargs. However, I can't seem to get it to work. I feel I must be missing something obvious here.

Example:

find . -name "*.java" -exec grep "@author" {} + \;
find: paths must precede expression
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression]

On the other hand, this works:

find . -name "*.java" -exec grep "@author" {}  \;

as does this:

find . -name "*.java" | xargs  grep "@author"

Answer 1

You don't need \; together with +

Answer 2

It's much easier just to use find -print0 | xargs --null -I XXX do_something XXX. Let find to the finding and xargs do the, er, other stuff.