tldr/pages/common/xargs.md

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 arguments on spaces, tabs, newlines and end-of-file.

• Main usage pattern:

{{arguments_source}} | xargs {{command}}

• Delete all files with a .backup extension. -print0 on find uses a null character to split the files, and -0 changes the delimiter to the null character (useful if there's whitespace in filenames):

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}}