Setting file permission for Files and Directories

Question

I need to below permission policy to my files under www folder

664 to all files www recursively 755 to all directories under www recursively

I tried

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} ; 
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} ;

But always getting error

find: missing argument to `-exec'

What is the solution?

Answer 1

Backslash before semi-colon (or quotes around it):

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

The shell sees the semi-colon you typed as the end of the command and does not pass it to find, which then complains that it is missing.

Answer 2

Use backslash before ';'

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;