unix - How to pipe list of files returned by find command to cat to view all the files

Question

I am doing a find and then getting a list of files. How do I pipe it to another utility like cat (so that cat displays the contents of all those files) and basically need to grep something from these files.

Answer 1

1. Piping to another process (Although this WON'T accomplish what you said you are trying to do):

   command1 | command2
   

   This will send the output of command1 as the input of command2

2. -exec on a find (this will do what you are wanting to do -- but is specific to find)

   find . -name '*.foo' -exec cat {} ;
   

   (Everything between find and -exec are the find predicates you were already using. {} will substitute the particular file you found into the command (cat {} in this case); the ; is to end the -exec command.)

3. send output of one process as command line arguments to another process

   command2 `command1`
   

   for example:

   cat `find . -name '*.foo' -print`
   

   (Note these are BACK-QUOTES not regular quotes (under the tilde ~ on my keyboard).) This will send the output of command1 into command2 as command line arguments. Note that file names containing spaces (newlines, etc) will be broken into separate arguments, though.