xargs

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

xargs is a Unix program available on most Unix systems , including FreeBSD , Linux , Solaris, and ReactOS . It is used to convert standard input into command lines . xargs first appeared in PWB / UNIX .

functionality

xargs accepts text via standard input (usually via pipes). This is given to the specified argument as a command line argument.

Xargs is often used with find : 

$ find / -name '*.o' | xargs rm

This command removes all files that end in '.o' from the computer's file system.

find alone would output this: 

$ find / -name '*.o'
./dev/proj/a.o
./dev/proj/b.o

xargs converts this into the call 

$ rm ./dev/proj/a.o ./dev/proj/b.o

around. Since the number of command line arguments cannot be arbitrarily large under many operating systems, xargs divides too many arguments into several calls if necessary.

Web links