When dealing with filenames one has to get used to always using '\0' separated output instead of newline separated output, as filenames in Linux can contain eve

When dealing with filenames one has to get used to always using '\0' separated output instead of newline separated output, as filenames in Linux can contain everything except '\0' and '/'. Luckily most tools are prepared for this and have options to either output '\0' separators or accept them as input. Dealing with all the files in the current directory would look something like this (for demonstration, can be made shorter by using '-name' or '-regex' option from 'find'): find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | grep -z needle | xargs -n 1 -0 echo Looping over '\0' separated output is possible as well with this: find . -print0 | while read -r -d $'\0' filename; do echo "$filename"; done It stops being brittle when used correctly, but can take a bit getting used to and can get a little verbose.