It's also wrong irregardless of the shell escaping. That will not always count the number of lines in all the files under a directory that contain at least one

It's also wrong irregardless of the shell escaping. That will not always count the number of lines in all the files under a directory that contain at least one "foo" - when shelling-out, you have to be sure to use the tools correctly: $ mkdir sh $ cd sh $ >foo find . -type f -print0 $ >bar head -1 foo foo $ # four lines with "foo" in file bar $ >foo echo foo $ mv foo 'bar > baz' $ # one line with "foo" in file bar?baz $ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep foo | wc -l 3 $ # Wait a minute that's not five, I KNOW there five lines! $ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep foo Binary file ./bar matches ./bar baz:foo $ # oh... $ find . -type f -exec grep -c foo '{}' \; 4 1 $ # might as well get everything closer to correct $ env -i /usr/bin/find . -type f -execdir /usr/bin/grep -c foo -- '{}' \; | \ env -i /usr/bin/awk '{t+=$1}END{print t}' 5