Why can't I pipe into the 'file' command?

I'm looking for an mp3 file in the firefox cache folder.

I was thinking I could run the command 'find -size +2M' and pipe that output into the 'file' command to tell me which is an mp3, something like this

find -size +2M | file

But this doesn't work, what am I doing wrong?

This is output
Usage: file [-bcikLhnNrsvz0] [-e test] [-f namefile] [-F separator] [-m magicfiles] file...
file -C -m magicfiles
Try `file --help' for more information.

You "Pipe" the output of one command into another command. You can't "Pipe" to a file you need to redirect - Use > instead of |.

I don't believe the file command accepts standard input. It should work with xargs. For example:

Quote:

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$ ls
testfile.txt

$ echo testfile.txt | file
Usage: file [-bcikLhnNrsvz0] [-e test] [-f namefile] [-F separator] [-m magicfiles] file...
file -C -m magicfiles
Try `file --help' for more information.

$ echo testfile.txt | xargs file
testfile.txt: ASCII English text

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BTW, I believe there will be a problem if a filename contains spaces. This can be gotten around as follows:

Code:

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find . -print0 | xargs -0 file

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"file" is used to determine the type of a file. I suspect you want the results of the find command to go "into" a file. In that case it would be:

Code:

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find -size +2M > filenameyouselect

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Change the filenameyouselect to be the name of the file you want the create and place the results in. If the file you want to use already exists and you want to append the output of the command to the file, use >> in place of >.

@kaibob, Thanks for the help. That's what I needed.

@Cogier and @blueridgedog, NO lol, but thanks for trying. I needed the file types not putting the output in a file.

I have extracted two histograms from this file:

Bin/signal/HWW_41_lord_cteq66m_170_170_sig_LO.dat

which contained a lot of other histograms. Now I'm trying to plot them, but I'm not sure how to do it?

Also it says that the extracted files are in ASCII English text format, could someone tell me what that means and whether it is possible to plot them?

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