changing permission for files and folder recursively using shell command in mac

Question

In Linux we can use the following command to change permission mode of the files and folders recursively.

find "/Users/Test/Desktop/PATH" -exec * chmod 777 {} \;

how could i do the same for mac as i m getting the following error repeatatively.

find: TEST_FILE: No such file or directory

Answer 1

You can just use the -R (recursive) flag.

chmod -R 777 /Users/Test/Desktop/PATH

Answer 2

The issue is that the * is getting interpreted by your shell and is expanding to a file named TEST_FILE that happens to be in your current working directory, so you're telling find to execute the command named TEST_FILE which doesn't exist. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with that *, you should just remove it.

Furthermore, you should use the idiom -exec program '{}' \+ instead of -exec program '{}' \; so that find doesn't fork a new process for each file. With ;, a new process is forked for each file, whereas with +, it only forks one process and passes all of the files on a single command line, which for simple programs like chmod is much more efficient.

Lastly, chmod can do recursive changes on its own with the -R flag, so unless you need to search for specific files, just do this:

chmod -R 777 /Users/Test/Desktop/PATH