find . -name *.c –print为什么会出错

今天执行find . -name *.c -print，想查一下当前目录下的.c的文件， 给出来这个提示:

find: paths must precede expression Usage:

find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt| exec] [path...] [expression]

当时我就纳了闷了，奇怪，然后我find . -name *.c -print 加了个转义字符就可以了，

查了下man find 有如下解释

$ find . -name *.c -print find: paths must precede expression Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt| exec] [path...] [expression] This happens because *.c has been expanded by the shell resulting in find actually receiving a command line like this: find . -name bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c -print That command is of course not going to work. Instead of doing things this way, you should enclose the pattern in quotes or escape the wild‐ card: $ find . -name *.c -print

也就是说shell会吧*.c展开为 bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c

等价于执行find . -name bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c -print

当然会报错了 所以加个屏蔽shell的解释 或者使用$ find . -name '*.c' -print 这样就不会报错了。