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XARGS(1) General Commands Manual XARGS(1) NAME xargs -- construct argument list(s) and execute utility SYNOPSIS xargs [-0pt] [-E eofstr] [-I replstr [-R replacements]] [-J replstr] [-L number] [-n number [-x]] [-s size] [utility [argument ...]] DESCRIPTION The xargs utility reads space, tab, newline and end-of-file delimited arguments from the standard input and executes the specified utility with them as arguments. The utility and any arguments specified on the command line are given to the utility upon each invocation, followed by some number of the ar- guments read from standard input. The utility is repeatedly executed until standard input is exhausted. Spaces, tabs and newlines may be embedded in arguments using single (`` ' '') or double (``"'') quotes or backslashes (``\''). Single quotes escape all non-single quote characters, excluding newlines, up to the matching single quote. Double quotes escape all non-double quote characters, excluding newlines, up to the matching double quote. Any single character, including newlines, may be escaped by a back- slash. The options are as follows: -0 Change xargs to expect NUL (``\0'') characters as separators, instead of spaces and newlines. This is expected to be used in concert with the -print0 function in find(1). -E eofstr Use eofstr as a logical EOF marker. -I replstr Execute utility for each input line, replacing one or more oc- curences of replstr in up to replacements (or 5 if no -R flag is specified) arguments to utility with the entire line of in- put. The resulting arguments, after replacement is done, will not be allowed to grow beyond 255 bytes; this is implemented by concatenating as much of the argument containing replstr as possible, to the constructed arguments to utility, up to 255 bytes. The 255 byte limit does not apply to arguments to utility which do not contain replstr, and furthermore, no re- placement will be done on utility itself. Implies -x. -J replstr If this option is specified, xargs will use the data read from standard input to replace the first occurrence of replstr in- stead of appending that data after all other arguments. This option will not effect how many arguments will be read from in- put (-n), or the size of the command(s) xargs will generate (-s). The option just moves where those arguments will be placed in the command(s) that are executed. The replstr must show up as a distinct argument to xargs. It will not be recog- nized if, for instance, it is in the middle of a quoted string. Furthermore, only the first occurrence of the replstr will be replaced. For example, the following command will copy the list of files and directories which start with an uppercase letter in the current directory to destdir: /bin/ls -1d [A-Z]* | xargs -J % cp -rp % destdir -L number Call utility for every number lines read. If EOF is reached and fewer lines have been read than number then utility will be called with the available lines. -n number Set the maximum number of arguments taken from standard input for each invocation of the utility. An invocation of utility will use less than number standard input arguments if the num- ber of bytes accumulated (see the -s option) exceeds the speci- fied size or there are fewer than number arguments remaining for the last invocation of utility. The current default value for number is 5000. -p Echo each command to be executed and ask the user whether it should be executed. An affirmative response, `y' in the POSIX locale, causes the command to be executed, any other response causes it to be skipped. No commands are executed if the process is not attached to a terminal. -R replacements Specify the maximum number of arguments that -I will do re- placement in. -s size Set the maximum number of bytes for the command line length provided to utility. The sum of the length of the utility name, the arguments passed to utility (including NULL termina- tors) and the current environment will be less than or equal to this number. The current default value for size is ARG_MAX - 4096. -t Echo the command to be executed to standard error immediately before it is executed. -x Force xargs to terminate immediately if a command line contain- ing number arguments will not fit in the specified (or default) command line length. If no utility is specified, echo(1) is used. Undefined behavior may occur if utility reads from the standard input. The xargs utility exits immediately (without processing any further in- put) if a command line cannot be assembled, utility cannot be invoked, an invocation of the utility is terminated by a signal or an invocation of the utility exits with a value of 255. DIAGNOSTICS The xargs utility exits with a value of 0 if no error occurs. If utility cannot be found, xargs exits with a value of 127, otherwise if utility cannot be executed, xargs exits with a value of 126. If any other error occurs, xargs exits with a value of 1. SEE ALSO echo(1), find(1), execvp(3) STANDARDS The xargs utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") compli- ant. The -J and -R options are non-standard FreeBSD extensions which may not be available on other operating systems. HISTORY The xargs command appeared in PWB UNIX. BUGS If utility attempts to invoke another command such that the number of arguments or the size of the environment is increased, it risks execvp(3) failing with E2BIG. FreeBSD 4.7 May 7, 2001 XARGS(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | DIAGNOSTICS | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | HISTORY | BUGS
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