NAME
apply
—
apply a command to a set of
arguments
SYNOPSIS
apply |
[- #]
[-d ] [-a
magic] command argument
... |
DESCRIPTION
apply
runs the named
command on each given argument
in turn.
Character sequences of the form
“%d
” in command,
where ‘d’ is a digit from 1 to 9, are replaced by the
d
'th following unused
argument. In this case, the largest digit number of
arguments are discarded for each execution of
command.
The options are as follows:
-
#- Normally arguments are taken singly; the optional number
-
# specifies the number of arguments to be passed to command. If the number is zero, command is run, without arguments, once for each argument.If any sequences of “
%d
” occur in command, the-
# option is ignored. -a
magic- Use magic as the magic character instead of the
default ‘
%
’. -d
- Debug mode. Print commands to the standard output but do not actually execute them.
ENVIRONMENT
SHELL
- Pathname of shell to use. If this variable is not defined, the Bourne shell is used.
FILES
- /bin/sh
- default shell
EXAMPLES
Operate similar to ls(1):
$ apply echo *
Compare the a* files to the b* files:
$ apply -2 cmp a1 b1 a2 b2 a3
b3
Run who(1) five times:
$ apply -0 who 1 2 3 4 5
Link all files in the current directory to the directory /home/joe:
$ apply 'ln %1 /home/joe'
*
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The apply
command appeared in
4.2BSD.
AUTHORS
Rob Pike
BUGS
Shell metacharacters in command may have bizarre effects; it is best to enclose complicated commands in single quotes ('').