Use -print0/-0 or find -exec + to allow for non-alphanumeric filenames.

Problematic code:

find . -type f | xargs md5sum

Correct code:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum
find . -type f -exec md5sum {} +

Rationale:

By default, xargs interprets spaces and quotes in an unsafe and unexpected way. Whenever it's used, it should be used with -0 or --null to split on \0 bytes, and find should be made to output \0 separated filenames.

POSIX does not require find or xargs to support null terminators, so you can also use find -exec +.

Exceptions

None.