Find files and tar them (with spaces)

linux find backup tar
Caleb Kester picture Caleb Kester · May 5, 2011 · Viewed 112.1k times · Source

Alright, so simple problem here. I'm working on a simple back up code. It works fine except if the files have spaces in them. This is how I'm finding files and adding them to a tar archive:

find . -type f | xargs tar -czvf backup.tar.gz

The problem is when the file has a space in the name because tar thinks that it's a folder. Basically is there a way I can add quotes around the results from find? Or a different way to fix this?

Answer

Steve Kehlet picture Steve Kehlet · Sep 6, 2012

Use this:

find . -type f -print0 | tar -czvf backup.tar.gz --null -T -

It will:

  • deal with files with spaces, newlines, leading dashes, and other funniness
  • handle an unlimited number of files
  • won't repeatedly overwrite your backup.tar.gz like using tar -c with xargs will do when you have a large number of files

Also see:

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