redirecting output from several piped commands

Question

This works:

find . -type f | xargs md5sum | sort

This does not and gives several "md5sum: xyz not found" errors:

( find . -type f | xargs md5sum | sort ) >~/md5.txt

Same for:

find . -type f | xargs md5sum | sort >~/md5.txt

This works:

md5deep -r . | sort >~/md5.txt

I would like to understand why the redirection of the pipe constructs doesn't work.

Your third example produces valid output for me. What operating system are you testing on? — Oliver Salzburg
– Oliver Salzburg, Commented Mar 9, 2012 at 15:20
Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS + bash version 4.1.5(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) — KIAaze
– KIAaze, Commented Mar 9, 2012 at 15:28

kev · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-09 16:08:04Z

3

Very possibly, file name starts with xyz contains white space.
You can try this:

$ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort

answered Mar 9, 2012 at 16:08

kev

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