/* Void Main's man pages */
{ phpMan } else { main(); }
XARGS(1) XARGS(1)
NAME
xargs - build and execute command lines from standard input
SYNOPSIS
xargs [-0prtx] [-E eof-str] [-e[eof-str]] [--eof[=eof-str]] [--null] [-d delimiter] [--delimiter delimiter] [-I replace-
str] [-i[replace-str]] [--replace[=replace-str]] [-l[max-lines]] [-L max-lines] [--max-lines[=max-lines]] [-n max-args]
[--max-args=max-args] [-s max-chars] [--max-chars=max-chars] [-P max-procs] [--max-procs=max-procs] [--interactive]
[--verbose] [--exit] [--no-run-if-empty] [--arg-file=file] [--show-limits] [--version] [--help] [command [initial-
arguments]]
DESCRIPTION
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.
The command line for command is built up until it reaches a system-defined limit (unless the -n and -L options are used).
The specified command will be invoked as many times as necessary to use up the list of input items. In general, there
will be many fewer invocations of command than there were items in the input. This will normally have significant per-
formance benefits. Some commands can usefully be executed in parallel too; see the -P option.
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 in-
put. 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 spe-
cial (every character is taken literally). Disables the end of file string, which is treated like any other argu-
ment. Useful when input items might contain white space, quote marks, or backslashes. The GNU find -print0 op-
tion 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 de-
sign 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.
-E eof-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. If the replace-str argument is missing,
the effect is the same as -I{}. 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-lines is not specified, it de-
faults 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 largest allowed value is system-dependent, and is calculated as
the argument length limit for exec, less the size of your environment, less 2048 bytes of headroom. If this value
is more than 128KiB, 128Kib is used as the default value; otherwise, the default value is the maximum. 1KiB is
1024 bytes. xargs automatically adapts to tighter constraints.
--verbose
-t Print the command line on the standard error output before executing it.
--version
Print the version number of xargs and exit.
--show-limits
Display the limits on the command-line length which are imposed by the operating system, xargs' choice of buffer
size and the -s option. Pipe the input from /dev/null (and perhaps specify --no-run-if-empty) if you don't want
xargs to do anything.
--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 or the -L option with -P; otherwise chances are that only one exec will be
done.
EXAMPLES
find /tmp -name core -type f -print | xargs /bin/rm -f
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 di-
rectory names containing spaces or newlines are correctly handled.
find /tmp -depth -name core -type f -delete
Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them, but more efficiently than in the previous example
(because we avoid the need to use fork(2) and exec(2) to launch rm and we don't need the extra xargs process).
cut -d: -f1 < /etc/passwd | sort | xargs echo
Generates a compact listing of all the users on the system.
xargs sh -c 'emacs "$@" < /dev/tty' emacs
Launches the minimum number of copies of Emacs needed, one after the other, to edit the files listed on xargs' standard
input. This example achieves the same effect as BSD's -o option, but in a more flexible and portable way.
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 POSIX standard allows implementations to have a limit on the size of arguments to the exec functions. This limit
could be as low as 4096 bytes including the size of the environment. For scripts to be portable, they must not rely on a
larger value. However, I know of no implementation whose actual limit is that small. The --show-limits option can be
used to discover the actual limits in force on the current system.
SEE ALSO
find(1), locate(1), locatedb(5), updatedb(1), fork(2), execvp(3), Finding Files (on-line in Info, or printed)
BUGS
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 Consider-
ations'' 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 invoca-
tion 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 in-
vocation 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 findu-
tils package in general can be sent to the bug-findutils mailing list. To join the list, send email to bug-findutils-re-
questATgnu.org.
XARGS(1)
