XARGS(1) General Commands Manual XARGS(1)
NAME
xargs - build and execute command lines from standard input
SYNOPSIS
xargs [options] [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 echo) one or more times with any initial-argu-
ments 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-de-
fined limit (unless the -n and -L options are used). The specified com-
mand 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 com-
mand than there were items in the input. This will normally have sig-
nificant performance benefits. Some commands can usefully be executed
in parallel too; see the -P option.
Because Unix filenames can contain blanks and newlines, this default be-
haviour is often problematic; filenames containing blanks and/or new-
lines 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 pro-
gram 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
-0, --null
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.
-a file, --arg-file=file
Read items from file instead of standard input. If you use this
option, stdin remains unchanged when commands are run. Other-
wise, stdin is redirected from /dev/null.
--delimiter=delim, -d delim
Input items are terminated by the specified character. The spec-
ified 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. When process-
ing the input, quotes and backslash are not special; every char-
acter in the input is taken literally. The -d option disables
any end-of-file string, which is treated like any other argument.
You can use this option when the input consists of simply new-
line-separated items, although it is almost always better to de-
sign your program to use --null where this is possible.
-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.
-e[eof-str], --eof[=eof-str]
This option is a synonym for the -E option. Use -E instead, be-
cause 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.
-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 char-
acter. Implies -x and -L 1.
-i[replace-str], --replace[=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{}. The -i 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.
-l[max-lines], --max-lines[=max-lines]
Synonym for the -L option. Unlike -L, the max-lines argument is
optional. If max-lines is not specified, it defaults to one.
The -l option is deprecated since the POSIX standard specifies -L
instead.
-n max-args, --max-args=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.
-P max-procs, --max-procs=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. While xargs is run-
ning, you can send its process a SIGUSR1 signal to increase the
number of commands to run simultaneously, or a SIGUSR2 to de-
crease the number. You cannot increase it above an implementa-
tion-defined limit (which is shown with --show-limits). You can-
not decrease it below 1. xargs never terminates its commands;
when asked to decrease, it merely waits for more than one exist-
ing command to terminate before starting another. xargs always
waits for all child processes to exit before exiting itself (but
see BUGS).
If you do not use the -P option, xargs will not handle the SI-
GUSR1 and SIGUSR2 signals, meaning that they will terminate the
program (unless they were blocked in the parent process before
xargs was started).
Please note that it is up to the called processes to properly
manage parallel access to shared resources. For example, if more
than one of them tries to print to stdout, the output will be
produced in an indeterminate order (and very likely mixed up) un-
less the processes collaborate in some way to prevent this. Us-
ing some kind of locking scheme is one way to prevent such prob-
lems. In general, using a locking scheme will help ensure cor-
rect output but reduce performance. If you don't want to toler-
ate the performance difference, simply arrange for each process
to produce a separate output file (or otherwise use separate re-
sources).
-o, --open-tty
Reopen stdin as /dev/tty in the child process before executing
the command. This is useful if you want xargs to run an interac-
tive application.
-p, --interactive
Prompt the user about whether to run each command line and read a
line from the terminal. Only run the command line if the re-
sponse starts with `y' or `Y'. Implies -t.
--process-slot-var=name
Set the environment variable name to a unique value in each run-
ning child process. Values are reused once child processes exit.
This can be used in a rudimentary load distribution scheme, for
example.
-r, --no-run-if-empty
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.
-s max-chars, --max-chars=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 sys-
tem-dependent, and is calculated as the argument length limit for
exec, less the size of your environment, less 2048 bytes of head-
room. If this value is more than 128 KiB, 128 KiB is used as the
default value; otherwise, the default value is the maximum.
1 KiB is 1024 bytes. xargs automatically adapts to tighter con-
straints.
--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.
-t, --verbose
Print the command line on the standard error output before exe-
cuting it.
-x, --exit
Exit if the size (see the -s option) is exceeded.
-- Delimit the option list. Later arguments, if any, are treated as
operands even if they begin with -. For example, xargs -- --help
runs the command --help (found in PATH) instead of printing the
usage text, and xargs -- --mycommand runs the command --mycommand
instead of rejecting this as unrecognized option.
--help Print a summary of the options to xargs and exit.
--version
Print the version number of xargs and exit.
The options --max-lines (-L, -l), --replace (-I, -i) and --max-args (-n)
are mutually exclusive. If some of them are specified at the same time,
then xargs will generally use the option specified last on the command
line, i.e., it will reset the value of the offending option (given be-
fore) to its default value. Additionally, xargs will issue a warning
diagnostic on stderr. The exception to this rule is that the special
max-args value 1 ('-n1') is ignored after the --replace option and its
aliases -I and -i, because it would not actually conflict.
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 contain-
ing 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 contain-
ing 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.
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 Edi-
tion) 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 -o option is an extension to the POSIX standard for better compati-
bility with BSD.
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 op-
tion can be used to discover the actual limits in force on the current
system.
In versions of xargs up to and including version 4.9.0, SIGUSR1 and SI-
GUSR2 would not cause xargs to terminate even if the -P option was not
used.
HISTORY
The xargs program was invented by Herb Gellis at Bell Labs. See the
Texinfo manual for findutils, Finding Files, for more information.
BUGS
It is not possible for xargs to be used securely, since there will al-
ways 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 win-
dow 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 re-
lated 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 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 be-
cause it doesn't use the -i option. The second invocation of xargs does
have such a limit, but we have ensured that it never encounters a line
which is longer than it can handle. This is not an ideal solution. In-
stead, 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.
In versions of xargs up to and including version 4.9.0, xargs -P would
exit while some of its children were still running, if one of them exit-
ed with status 255.
REPORTING BUGS
GNU findutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/#get-
help>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>
Report any other issue via the form at the GNU Savannah bug tracker:
<https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=findutils>
General topics about the GNU findutils package are discussed at the
bug-findutils mailing list:
<https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-findutils>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 1990–2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+:
GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
SEE ALSO
find(1), kill(1), locate(1), updatedb(1), fork(2), execvp(3), locat-
edb(5), signal(7)
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/xargs>
or available locally via: info xargs
XARGS(1)
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