I have another approach, in case what you really want is just to do something with executable files--and not necessarily to actually force find to filter itself:

for i in `find -type f`; do [ -x $i ] && echo "$i is executable"; done

I prefer this because it doesn't rely on -executable which is platform specific; and it doesn't rely on -perm which is a bit arcane, a bit platform specific, and as written above requires the file to be executable for everyone (not just you).

The -type f is important because in *nix directories have to be executable to be traversable, and the more of the query is in the find command, the more memory efficient your command will be.

Anyhow, just offering another approach, since *nix is the land of a billion approaches.

I have another approach, in case what you really want is just to do something with executable files--and not necessarily to actually force find to filter itself:

for i in `find . -type f`; do [ -x $i ] && echo "$i is executable"; done

I prefer this because it doesn't rely on -executable which is platform specific; and it doesn't rely on -perm which is a bit arcane, a bit platform specific, and as written above requires the file to be executable for everyone (not just you).

. will start searching the current directory. This can be replaced with any directory path.

The -type f is important because in *nix directories have to be executable to be traversable, and the more of the query is in the find command, the more memory efficient your command will be.

Anyhow, just offering another approach, since *nix is the land of a billion approaches.