find . -name *.c -print 为何出错

   今天执行find . -name *.c -print，想查一下当前目录下的.c的文件， 给出来这个提示

find: paths must precede expression
       Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|
exec] [path...] [expression]

 

当时我就纳了闷了，奇怪，然后我find . -name \*.c -print 加了个转义字符就可以了，

查了下man find 有如下解释

 

 $ find . -name *.c -print
       find: paths must precede expression
       Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|
exec] [path...] [expression]

       This  happens  because  *.c has been expanded by the shell resulting in
       find actually receiving a command line like this:

       find . -name bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c -print

       That command is of course not going to work.  Instead of  doing  things
       this  way, you should enclose the pattern in quotes or escape the wild‐
       card:
       $ find . -name \*.c -print

也就是说shell会吧*.c展开为 bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c  等价于执行find . -name bigram.c code.c frcode.c locate.c -print

当然会报错了 所以加个\屏蔽shell的解释
或者使用$ find . -name ‘*.c’ -print  这样就不会报错了。