How to get a debug output from the find command

Well, as far as the -exec syntax goes, you could do like a lot of people, give up and use xargs:

find . -type f | xargs chown username

(or the files-with-spaces-and-other-nonsense-in-them-safe version)

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chown username

Or, to try to remember the right thing to do with the semicolon, what you need to drill into your head is that you're using a semicolon to terminate the command that -exec is running, and you have to escape the semicolon because it has special meaning to bash. Which is why it's backslash semicolon. You seem to have the {} substitution part okay.

As to killing files and so on, if you're running something big and dangerous like you're talking about, first do this:

find . -type f -exec echo chown username {} \;

and review the results. This is basically a "dry run" where you're seeing the commands it would run if you let it. Definitely a good practice. Won't help with the .* problem, but you know not to do that one now. :)

find /var -type -f -name somefile.php -exec cp /home/me/somefile.php {} \;

be careful!