“paths must precede expression” error when trying to find all jpg files in the current directory

Question

while running find command to find all the jpg files in the current directory as

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name *.jpg

i am getting the error as :

 find: paths must precede expression: pic1 (1).jpg
 Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-Dhelp|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]

i am not able to figure out what is wrong with that .

Answer 1

Always quote globs in find: find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.jpg"

To see why, try tracing the original command and looking at what is actually executed:

touch foo.jpg bar.jpg
strace find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name *.jpg 2>&1 | grep jpg
execve("/usr/bin/find", ["find", ".", "-maxdepth", "1", "-type", "f", "-name", "bar.jpg", "foo.jpg"], [/* 62 vars */]) = 0
...