I'm trying to do a find with a -exec of a command aliased in my .bash_profile on macOS. The find command shows
find: [alias cmd]: No such file or directory
when I use
find ./ -iname *.doc -exec sha256 {} \;`
where alias sha256="shasum -a 256".
Running the unaliased command works correctly.
Is find not supposed to be able to access defined command aliases, or is this a bug in find?
The -exec option of find wants pure executables, while alias-es are a shell feature, meaning that they exist only when you are within a shell.
You can run any command within a shell by making -exec run bash -c command. However, for aliases to be accepted, the shell has to be run interactively.
You can trick the interactiveness by executing bash -ic sha256, but since you put your alias definition in .bash_profile you would also need to trick it as a “login shell” as well as an interactive one, because that file is only read by so-called “login shells”. That is, you should execute bash -lic sha256. But that is slower and pollutes your sessions log a bit.
Therefore I would advise you to rather put your alias definition in .bashrc file (just create it if don't have it yet), so that your alias can be used by a simpler bash -i instead of bash -li.
This would make your whole command like:
find ./ -iname *.doc -exec bash -ic 'sha256 "$1"' -- {} \;
If you really must keep your alias definition in .bash_profile then make your command like:
find ./ -iname *.doc -exec bash -lic 'sha256 "$1"' -- {} \;
No, your alias is derived from bash. find expects an executable in your PATH environment variable. (if you type which <cmd | alias> and get nothing, find will complain)
