> find does print to stdout by default. Perhaps -print was > added later to distinguish the default mode from -print0, > which is common when pairing with xar

> find does print to stdout by default. Perhaps -print was > added later to distinguish the default mode from -print0, > which is common when pairing with xargs. find ... -print0 | xargs -0 $cmd is essential if you don't want all sorts of terrible things happening because a filename happens to contain a space or some sort of shell metachar. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xargs#The_separator_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xargs#The_separator_problem for the details. Personally, I use find ... -exec $cmd '{}' \; # calls $cmd once for each match find ... -exec $cmd '{}' + # calls $cmd with as matches as possible - minimising number of invocations of $cmd. I think this is either reasonably new, or not entirely standard, since I've used versions that don't have it. -ok $cmd \; is also pretty neat - same as exec, but asks for confirmation first.