xargs

Execute a command with piped arguments coming from another command, a file, etc.

The input is treated as a single block of text and split into separate pieces on spaces, tabs, newlines and end-of-file.

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• Run a command using the input data as arguments:

{arguments_source} | xargs {command}

• Run multiple chained commands on the input data:

{arguments_source} | xargs sh -c "{command1} && {command2} | {command3}"

• Delete all files with a .backup extension (-print0 uses a null character to split file names, and -0 uses it as delimiter):

find . -name {'*.backup'} -print0 | xargs -0 rm -v

• Execute the command once for each input line, replacing any occurrences of the placeholder (here marked as _) with the input line:

{arguments_source} | xargs -I _ {command} _ {optional_extra_arguments}

• Parallel runs of up to max-procs processes at a time; the default is 1. If max-procs is 0, xargs will run as many processes as possible at a time:

{arguments_source} | xargs -P {max-procs} {command}

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