NAME
xargs
—
construct argument list(s) and execute
utility
SYNOPSIS
xargs |
[-0oprt ]
[-E eofstr]
[-I replstr
[-R replacements]]
[-J replstr]
[-L number]
[-n number
[-x ]]
[-P maxprocs]
[-s size]
[utility [argument ...]] |
DESCRIPTION
The xargs
utility reads space, tab,
newline, and end-of-file delimited strings from the standard input and
executes the specified utility with the strings as
arguments.
Any arguments specified on the command line are given to the utility upon each invocation, followed by some number of the arguments read from standard input. The utility is repeatedly executed one or more times 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 backslash.
The options are as follows:
-0
- Change
xargs
to expect NUL (‘\0
’) characters as separators, instead of spaces and newlines. The quoting mechanisms described above are not performed. This option 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 occurrences of replstr in up to
replacements (or 5 if no
-R
flag is specified) arguments to utility with the entire line of input. 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 replacement 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 instead of appending that data after all other arguments. This option will not effect how many arguments will be read from input (-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 toxargs
. It will not be recognized 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 of non-empty lines read. A line ending in unescaped white space and the next non-empty line are considered to form one single line. If EOF is reached and fewer than number lines have been read 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 utility. An invocation of
utility will use less than
number standard input arguments if the number of
bytes accumulated (see the
-s
option) exceeds the specified size or there are fewer than number arguments remaining for the last invocation of utility. The current default value for number is 5000. -o
- Reopen stdin as /dev/tty in the child process
before executing the command. This is useful if you want
xargs
to run an interactive application. -P
maxprocs- Parallel mode: run at most maxprocs invocations of utility at once.
-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 replacement in. If replacements is negative, the number of arguments in which to replace is unbounded. -r
- Do not run the command if there are no arguments. Normally the command is executed at least once even if there are no arguments.
-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
NUL
terminators) and the current environment will be less than or equal to this number. The current default value for size isARG_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 containing 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 input) if a command line cannot be
assembled, utility cannot be invoked, an invocation of
utility is terminated by a signal, or an invocation of
utility exits with a value of 255.
EXIT STATUS
xargs
exits with one of the following
values:
- 0
- All invocations of utility returned a zero exit status.
- 123
- One or more invocations of utility returned a nonzero exit status.
- 124
- The utility exited with a 255 exit status.
- 125
- The utility was killed or stopped by a signal.
- 126
- The utility was found but could not be executed.
- 127
- The utility could not be found.
- 1
- Some other error occurred.
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The xargs
utility is compliant with the
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”)
specification.
The flags -I
and
-L
are compliant with the X/Open
Portability Guide Issue 4 (“XPG4”)
specification.
The flags [-0JoPRr
] are extensions to
those specifications.
The meanings of the 123, 124, and 125 exit values were taken from
GNU xargs
.
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
.