.TH DESCEND 1 "31 March 1992" .SH NAME descend \- walk directory tree and execute a command at each node .SH SYNOPSIS .B descend [ .B \-afqrv ] .I command [ .I directory \&.\|.\|. ] .SH DESCRIPTION .B descend walks down a directory tree and executes a command at each node. It is not as versatile as .BR find (1), but it has a simpler syntax. If no .I directory is specified, .B descend starts at the current one. .LP Unlike .BR find , .B descend can be told to skip the special directories associated with RCS, CVS, and SCCS. This makes .B descend especially handy for use with these packages. It can be used with other commands too, of course. .LP .B descend is a poor man's way to make any command recursive. Note: .B descend does not follow symbolic links to directories unless they are specified on the command line. .SH OPTIONS .TP 15 .B \-a .I All. Descend into directories that begin with '.'. .TP .B \-f .I Force. Ignore errors during descent. Normally, .B descend quits when an error occurs. .TP .B \-q .I Quiet. Suppress the message `In directory .IR directory ' that is normally printed during the descent. .TP .B \-r .I Restricted. Don't descend into the special directories .SB RCS, .SB CVS, .SB CVS.adm, and .SB SCCS. .TP .B \-v .I Verbose. Print .I command before executing it. .SH EXAMPLES .TP 15 .B "descend ls" Cheap substitute for `ls -R'. .TP 15 .B "descend -f 'rm *' tree" Strip `tree' of its leaves. This command descends the `tree' directory, removing all regular files. Since .BR rm (1) does not remove directories, this command leaves the directory structure of `tree' intact, but denuded. The .B \-f option is required to keep .B descend from quitting. You could use `rm \-f' instead. .TP .B "descend -r 'co RCS/*'" /project/src/ Check out every RCS file under the directory .BR "/project/src" . .TP .B "descend -r 'cvs diff'" Perform CVS `diff' operation on every directory below (and including) the current one. .SH DIAGNOSTICS Returns 1 if errors occur (and the .B \-f option is not used). Otherwise returns 0. .SH SEE ALSO .BR find (1), .BR rcsintro (1), .BR cvs (1), .BR sccs (1) .SH AUTHOR Lowell Skoog .br Software Technology Group .br John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc. .SH BUGS Shell metacharacters in .I command may have bizarre effects. In particular, compound commands (containing ';', '[', and ']' characters) will not work. It is best to enclose complicated commands in single quotes \(aa\ \(aa.