Linux shell: xargs

xargs reads items from the standard input, delimited by blanks (which can be protected with double or single quotes or a backslash) or newlines, and executes the command (default is /bin/echo) one or more times with any initial-arguments followed by items read from standard input. Blank lines on the standard input are ignored.

 

Because Unix filenames can contain blanks and newlines, this default behaviour is often problematic; filenames containing blanks and/or newlines are incorrectly processed by xargs. In these situations it is better to use the '-0' option, which prevents such problems. When using this option you will need to ensure that the program which produces the input for xargs also uses a null character as a separator. If that program is GNU find for example, the '-print0' option does this for you.

 

If any invocation of the command exits with a status of 255, xargs will stop immediately without reading any further input. An error message is issued on stderr when this happens.

 

Examples

find /tmp -name core -type f -print | xargs /bin/rm -f

Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them. Note that this will work incorrectly if there are any filenames containing newlines or spaces.

find /tmp -name core -type f -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -f

Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them, processing filenames in such a way that file or directory names containing spaces or newlines are correctly handled.

cut -d: -f1 < /etc/passwd | sort | xargs echo

Generates a compact listing of all the users on the system.

 

 

Options

--arg-file=file, -a file

Read items from  file instead of standard input. If you use this option, stdin remains unchanged when commands are run. Otherwise, stdin is redirected from  /dev/null.

--null, -0

Input items are terminated by a null character instead of by whitespace, and the quotes and backslash are not special (every character is taken literally). Disables the end of file string, which is treated like any other argument. Useful when input items might contain white space, quote marks, or backslashes. The GNU find -print0 option produces input suitable for this mode.

--delimiter=delim, -d delim

Input items are terminated by the specified character. Quotes and backslash are not special; every character in the input is taken literally. Disables the end-of-file string, which is treated like any other argument. This can be used when the input consists of simply newline-separated items, although it is almost always better to design your program to use '--null' where this is possible. The specified delimiter may be a single character, a C-style character escape such as  /n, or an octal or hexadecimal escape code. Octal and hexadecimal escape codes are understood as for the  printf command. Multibyte characters are not supported.

-Eeof-str

Set the end of file string to  eof-str. If the end of file string occurs as a line of input, the rest of the input is ignored. If neither -E nor -e is used, no end of file string is used.

--eof[=eof-str], -e[eof-str]

This option is a synonym for the '-E' option. Use '-E' instead, because it is POSIX compliant while this option is not. If  eof-str is omitted, there is no end of file string. If neither -E nor -e is used, no end of file string is used.

--help

Print a summary of the options to  xargs and exit.

-I replace-str

Replace occurrences of  replace-str in the initial-arguments with names read from standard input. Also, unquoted blanks do not terminate input items; instead the separator is the newline character. Implies  -x and  -L 1.

--replace[=replace-str], -i[replace-str]

This option is a synonym for -I replace-str if  replace-str is specified, and for -I{} otherwise. This option is deprecated; use -I instead.

-L max-lines

Use at most  max-lines nonblank input lines per command line. Trailing blanks cause an input line to be logically continued on the next input line. Implies  -x.

--max-lines[=max-lines], -l[max-lines]

Synonym for the -L option. Unlike -L, the  max-lines argument is optional. If  max-args is not specified, it defaults to one. The -l option is deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies -L instead.

--max-args=max-args, -n max-args

Use at most  max-args arguments per command line. Fewer than  max-args arguments will be used if the size (see the -s option) is exceeded, unless the -x option is given, in which case  xargs will exit.

--interactive, -p

Prompt the user about whether to run each command line and read a line from the terminal. Only run the command line if the response starts with 'y' or 'Y'. Implies  -t.

--no-run-if-empty, -r

If the standard input does not contain any nonblanks, do not run the command. Normally, the command is run once even if there is no input. This option is a GNU extension.

--max-chars=max-chars, -s max-chars

Use at most  max-chars characters per command line, including the command and initial-arguments and the terminating nulls at the ends of the argument strings. The default is 131072 characters, not including the size of the environment variables (which are provided for separately so that it doesn't matter if your environment variables take up more than 131072 bytes). The operating system places limits on the values that you can usefully specify, and if you exceed these a warning message is printed and the value actually used is set to the appropriate upper or lower limit.

--verbose, -t

Print the command line on the standard error output before executing it.

--version

Print the version number of  xargs and exit.

--exit, -x

Exit if the size (see the  -s option) is exceeded.

--max-procs=max-procs, -P max-procs

Run 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. Use the -n option with  -P; otherwise chances are that only one exec will be done.