I want to write a bash script that receives a list of files through a pipe, writes a tempfile and then starts a program (qiv – an image viewer) with this tempfile.
Example:
find . -atime 2 | piped_qiv
where piped_qiv would look something like this:
#!/bin/bash [receive file list through pipe] > /tmp/qiv_temp qiv -fm -F /tmp/qiv_temp rm /tmp/qiv_temp
I’m probably missing something very basic about bash scripting but I was not able to find a proper solution to this problem on this side or google.
Sidenote: I know I could also use qiv $(find . …) but using pipes would feel more natural to me.
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Answer
Use xargs:
find . -atime 2 -print0 | xargs -0 my_command
-print0 will make find print each found file seperated by NUL () and -0 will make xargs read each line separated by the same.
Alternative if you want to pass a file you can use process substitution:
% echo <(ls) /dev/fd/63
And in your case:
qiv -fm -F <(my_command)
Or reading from stdin:
qiv -fm -F <(cat)