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I need to strip the executable flag from all files within a certain directory and sub directories. Right now I'm doing it with a 2 step process

find /dir/ -type f -exec chmod ugo-x {} \;
find /dir/ -type d -exec chmod ugo+rx {} \;

Is it possible to modify the first line so that I can strip exec flag from all non-directory files? Since this needs to be done on a fairly regular basis across a lot of directories and files, I'd prefer not to use a bash script which would slow it down.

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  • Out of curiosity, what exactly doesn't your current command do properly? The -type f predicate already selects all files (or equivalently, all non-directory files, since anything that is a file cannot also be a directory).
    – David Z
    Sep 26, 2010 at 8:56
  • @David: Sockets, FIFOs, symlinks, devices, etc. Sep 26, 2010 at 9:09
  • @Ignacio: Yes, but the question was about files, not all those other non-file things.
    – David Z
    Sep 26, 2010 at 9:26
  • @David: This is *nix. Everything is a file. Sep 26, 2010 at 9:29
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    @Ignacio: Everything has a filesystem path, sure, but you can't always say that everything is actually a file. Some people do, but others use "file" in the sense of a regular file, i.e. something that would be matched by the -type f predicate to find. To me, the wording of this question strongly suggested the latter meaning.
    – David Z
    Sep 27, 2010 at 4:15

1 Answer 1

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find ... '!' -type d ...
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  • Thanks, I didn't realize find had operators. Are the single quotes necessary as I managed to get it to work without them?
    – wting
    Sep 26, 2010 at 8:31
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    It depends on your shell and its options. bash uses ! in history expansion, so quoting it in the CLI is a good idea. You probably won't need it in a script though. Sep 26, 2010 at 9:08
  • History expansion is not active in scripts, correct.
    – Daenyth
    Sep 26, 2010 at 13:28

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