The find man page might benefit from adding a little bit more
user-friendly hand-holding here:
Index: find.1
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/src/usr.bin/find/find.1,v
retrieving revision 1.98
diff -u -r1.98 find.1
--- find.1 2 Sep 2019 21:18:41 -0000 1.98
+++ find.1 14 Aug 2020 02:59:48 -0000
@@ -231,6 +231,10 @@
.Qq {}
appears anywhere in the utility name or the
arguments it is replaced by the pathname of the current file.
+The semicolon will likely have to be escaped, depending on the shell.
+See
+.Sx CAVEATS
+below.
.Pp
If terminated by a plus sign,
the pathnames for which the
EXAMPLE:
========
$ find ~ -iname ".*" -exec echo {} \;
works, but
$ find ~ -iname ".*" -exec echo {} ;
does not.
(Yes, this is a contrived example. I wouldn't want to make people
copy things all over the place.)
