utility in Unix-like operating systems for passing large numbers of arguments to programs that can only take a small number of arguments
Questions tagged [xargs]
178 questions
42
votes
2 answers
using xargs to cd to a directory
Feeling like an idiot right now. Why does this not work?
echo "/some/directory/path" | xargs -n1 cd
Ian Lotinsky
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36
votes
5 answers
Replacement for xargs -d in osx
In Linux, you can use xargs -d, to quickly run the hostname command against four different servers with sequential names as follows:
echo -n 1,2,3,4 |xargs -d, -I{} ssh root@www{}.example.com hostname
It looks like the OSX xargs command does not…
Chase Seibert
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33
votes
3 answers
Why is xargs necessary?
Suppose I want to remove all files in a directory except for one named "notes.txt". I would do this with the pipeline, ls | grep -v "notes.txt" | xargs rm. Why do I need xargs if the output of the second pipe is the input that rm should use?
For the…
seewalker
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26
votes
3 answers
what is diff bentween xargs with braces and without in linux
I want to know what is the difference between this
ls | xargs rm
ls | xargs -i{} rm {}
Both are working for me
user19140477031
25
votes
5 answers
How can I move files with xargs on Linux?
I am trying this and it's not working:
ls file_* | xargs mv {} temp/
Any ideas?
user1953864
24
votes
4 answers
Why does this not work? "ls *.txt | xargs cat > all.txt" (all files into single txt document)
Why does this not work?
ls *.txt | xargs cat > all.txt
(I want to join the contents of all text files into a single 'all.txt' file.)
find with -exec should also work, but I would really like to understand the xargs syntax.
Thanks
ajo
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23
votes
2 answers
Create symlinks recursively for a whole tree
I am seeking for a command that would re-create a whole tree of files in a different directory. I would prefer to have all symlinks absolute. Can I do that with a find and xargs? ;-)
lzap
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21
votes
8 answers
How can I use two parameters at once with xargs?
I need to convert videos, but I don't know where are they, so I need to find them. How can I give the result and an output file name to FFmpeg with xargs?
I already found out that I can construct the two parameters with this command:
find . -iname…
kissgyorgy
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19
votes
1 answer
xargs -I replace-str option difference
From my understanding, the following should mean exactly the same:
ls -1 | xargs file {}
ls -1 | xargs -I{} file {}
if -I option is not specified, it is default to -I{}.
I want to list all files in the current directory and run file command on each…
foresightyj
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19
votes
4 answers
Redirect strace to file
Am trying to trace apache2. These are the commands i'm trying to run.
ps auxw | grep sbin/apache | awk '{print"-p " $2}' | xargs strace >> trace.txt
I tried
(ps auxw | grep sbin/apache | awk '{print"-p " $2}' | xargs strace ) >> trace.txt
or
ps…
Marin
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17
votes
5 answers
How to run sed on over 10 million files in a directory?
I have a directory that has 10144911 files in it. So far I've tried the following:
for f in ls; do sed -i -e 's/blah/blee/g' $f; done
Crashed my shell, the ls is in a tilda but i can't figure out how to make one.
ls | xargs -0 sed -i -e…
Sandro
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16
votes
3 answers
ls -rt (How to list just THE LAST file? e.g. for: | xargs gnome-open)
e.g. directory containing jpeg files: how to easily open just the most recent jpeg in the current directory?
ajo
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11
votes
2 answers
How to use wildcards in a xargs-command?
I've got a directory with numbered files, e.g. 1_foo.txt 2_bar.asc 13_test.png, and want to move them into individual directories (e.g. 1, 2 and 13) using as simple a bash command as possible.
Creating the numbered directories was easy:
mkdir $(seq…
n.st
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11
votes
4 answers
Xargs pass input to command that contains a pipe
As a vehicle to understand how to manipulate binding precedence with pipes, I'm trying to print the path of one file per directory - for every directory:
find $PWD -type d | xargs --delimiter "\n" -I% -n 1 (find % -maxdepth 1 | head -1)
I get no…
Sridhar Sarnobat
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10
votes
2 answers
xargs --replace/-I for single arguments
I'm trying to use xargs to run a command for each provided argument, but unfortunately the --replace/-I flag doesn't seem to work properly when conjugated with -n.
It seems that {} will expand into the full list of arguments read from stdin,…
André Fernandes
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