Hi, this is Sandra Henry-Stocker, author of the “Unix as a Second Language” blog on NetworkWorld.
In this Linux tip, we’re going to look at xargs. It’s a command that accepts input that is piped to it and then uses that input as arguments to whatever command you specify. Here’s a very simple example:
In this example, xargs is running a single command (head -3 file1 file2 file3), so it’s not really making anything easier. A better use of xargs is to have it work with a command like find that locates files fitting some criteria and then pipes its output to xargs. Here’s an example in which empty files are located and removed:
In this example, we see the command that xargs is running because I added the -t option.
For some commands, you may need to have xargs run once for each argument. To do this, you have add a loop using the -I option.
The -I and the two x characters create the loop (any word or character works) which is needed to run a separate command for each user.
That’s your Linux tip for xargs.
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