This manual page
documents the GNU version of
xargs.
xargs
reads items from the standard input, delimited by blanks (which can be
protected with double or single quotes or a backslash) or newlines,
and executes the
command
(default is /bin/echo) one or more times with any
initial-arguments
followed by items read from standard input. Blank lines on the
standard input are ignored.
Because Unix filenames can contain blanks and newlines, this default
behaviour is often problematic; filenames containing blanks
and/or newlines are incorrectly processed by
xargs.
In these situations it is better to use the `-0' option, which
prevents such problems. When using this option you will need to
ensure that the program which produces the input for
xargs
also uses a null character as a separator. If that program is
GNU
find
for example, the `-print0' option does this for you.
If any invocation of the command exits with a status of 255,
xargs
will stop immediately without reading any further input. An error
message is issued on stderr when this happens.
OPTIONS
--arg-file=file, -a file
Read items from
file
instead of standard input. If you use this option, stdin remains
unchanged when commands are run. Otherwise, stdin is redirected
from
/dev/null.
--null, -0
Input items are terminated by a null character instead of by
whitespace, and the quotes and backslash are not special (every
character is taken literally). Disables the end of file string, which
is treated like any other argument. Useful when input items might
contain white space, quote marks, or backslashes. The GNU find
-print0 option produces input suitable for this mode.
--delimiter=delim, -d delim
Input items are terminated by the specified character. Quotes and
backslash are not special; every character in the input is taken
literally. Disables the end-of-file string, which is treated like any
other argument. This can be used when the input consists of simply
newline-separated items, although it is almost always better to design
your program to use `--null' where this is possible. The specified
delimiter may be a single character, a C-style character escape such
as
\n,
or an octal or hexadecimal escape code. Octal and hexadecimal
escape codes are understood as for the
printf
command. Multibyte characters are not supported.
-Eeof-str
Set the end of file string to eof-str. If the end of file
string occurs as a line of input, the rest of the input is ignored.
If neither -E nor -e is used, no end of file string is used.
--eof[=eof-str], -e[eof-str]
This option is a synonym for the `-E' option. Use `-E' instead,
because it is POSIX compliant while this option is not. If
eof-str is omitted, there is no end of file string. If neither
-E nor -e is used, no end of file string is used.
--help
Print a summary of the options to
xargs
and exit.
-I replace-str
Replace occurrences of replace-str in the initial-arguments with
names read from standard input. Also, unquoted blanks do not
terminate input items; instead the separator is the newline character.
Implies -x and -L 1.
--replace[=replace-str], -i[replace-str]
This option is a synonym for -Ireplace-str if replace-str
is specified, and for -I{} otherwise. This option is deprecated; use
-I instead.
-L max-lines
Use at most max-lines nonblank input lines per command line.
Trailing blanks cause an input line to be logically continued on the
next input line. Implies -x.
--max-lines[=max-lines], -l[max-lines]
Synonym for the -L option. Unlike -L, the max-lines argument
is optional. If max-args is not specified, it defaults to one.
The -l option is deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies -L
instead.
--max-args=max-args, -n max-args
Use at most max-args arguments per command line. Fewer than
max-args arguments will be used if the size (see the -s option)
is exceeded, unless the -x option is given, in which case xargs
will exit.
--interactive, -p
Prompt the user about whether to run each command line and read a line
from the terminal. Only run the command line if the response starts
with `y' or `Y'. Implies -t.
--no-run-if-empty, -r
If the standard input does not contain any nonblanks, do not run the
command. Normally, the command is run once even if there is no input.
This option is a GNU extension.
--max-chars=max-chars, -s max-chars
Use at most max-chars characters per command line, including the
command and initial-arguments and the terminating nulls at the ends of
the argument strings. The default is 131072 characters, not including
the size of the environment variables (which are provided for
separately so that it doesn't matter if your environment variables
take up more than 131072 bytes). The operating system places limits
on the values that you can usefully specify, and if you exceed these a
warning message is printed and the value actually used is set to the
appropriate upper or lower limit.
--verbose, -t
Print the command line on the standard error output before executing
it.
--version
Print the version number of
xargs
and exit.
--exit, -x
Exit if the size (see the -s option) is exceeded.
--max-procs=max-procs, -P max-procs
Run up to max-procs processes at a time; the default is 1. If
max-procs is 0, xargs will run as many processes as
possible at a time. Use the -n option with -P;
otherwise chances are that only one exec will be done.
Find files named
core
in or below the directory
/tmp
and delete them. Note that this will work incorrectly if there are
any filenames containing newlines or spaces.
find /tmp -name core -type f -print0 | xargs -0 /bin/rm -f
Find files named
core
in or below the directory
/tmp
and delete them, processing filenames in such a way that file or
directory names containing spaces or newlines are correctly handled.
cut -d: -f1 < /etc/passwd | sort | xargs echo
Generates a compact listing of all the users on the system.
EXIT STATUS
xargs
exits with the following status:
0 if it succeeds
123 if any invocation of the command exited with status 1-125
124 if the command exited with status 255
125 if the command is killed by a signal
126 if the command cannot be run
127 if the command is not found
1 if some other error occurred.
Exit codes greater than 128 are used by the shell to indicate that
a program died due to a fatal signal.
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
As of GNU xargs version 4.2.9, the default behaviour of
xargs
is not to have a logical end-of-file marker. POSIX (IEEE Std 1003.1,
2004 Edition) allows this.
The -l and -i options appear in the 1997 version of the POSIX
standard, but do not appear in the 2004 version of the standard.
Therefore you should use -L and -I instead, respectively.
The -L option is incompatible with the -I option, but perhaps should not be.
It is not possible for
xargs
to be used securely, since there will always be a time gap between the
production of the list of input files and their use in the commands
that
xargs
issues. If other users have access to the system, they can manipulate
the filesystem during this time window to force the action of the
commands
xargs
runs to apply to files that you didn't intend. For a more detailed
discussion of this and related problems, please refer to the
``Security Considerations'' chapter in the findutils Texinfo
documentation. The -execdir option of
find
can often be used as a more secure alternative.
When you use the -I option, each line read from the input is buffered
internally. This means that there is an upper limit on the length
of input line that
xargs
will accept when used with the -I option. To work around this
limitation, you can use the -s option to increase the amount of
buffer space that
xargs
uses, and you can also use an extra invocation of
xargs
to ensure that very long lines do not occur.
For example:
somecommand | xargs -s 50000 echo | xargs -I '{}' -s 100000 rm '{}'
Here, the first invocation of
xargs
has no input line length limit
because it doesn't use the -i option. The second invocation of
xargs
does have such a limit, but we have ensured that the it never encounters
a line which is longer than it can handle. This is not an ideal
solution. Instead, the -i option should not impose a line length
limit, which is why this discussion appears in the BUGS section.
The problem doesn't occur with the output of
find(1)
because it emits just one filename per line.
The best way to report a bug is to use the form at
http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils.
The reason for this is that you will then be able to track progress in
fixing the problem. Other comments about xargs(1) and about
the findutils package in general can be sent to the
bug-findutils
mailing list. To join the list, send email to
bug-findutils-request@gnu.org.
