z/OS V1R9.0 UNIX System Services Command ... - Christian Grothoff

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xargs
xargs — Construct an argument list and run a command
Format
Description
Options
xargs [–I placeholder] [–i [placeholder]] [–L number] [–l [number]] [–n number]
[–ptx] [–E [eofstr]] [–e [eofstr]] [–s size] [command [argument ...]]
The xargs command line typically contains the skeleton, or template, of another
command. This template looks like a normal command, except that it lacks some
arguments. xargs adds arguments from standard input (stdin) to complete the
command, then runs the resulting command. If more input remains, it repeats this
process.
In a doublebyte locale, some options may accept a doublebyte string as an
argument. In these cases, an incorrect doublebyte string would be detected during
command-line parsing.
xargs gets the needed arguments from stdin. Different options tell how stdin is to
be interpreted to obtain these arguments.
–I placeholder
Specifies that each line in stdin be considered as a single argument. The
placeholder following the –I is a string that can appear multiple times in the
command template. xargs strips the input line of any leading white-space
characters and inserts it in place of the placeholder string. For example,
with:
xargs –I ’{}’ mv dir1/’{}’ dir2/ ’{}’
stdin should consist of lines giving names of files that you want moved
from dir1 to dir2. xargs substitutes these names for the {} placeholder in
each place that it appears in the command template.
When xargs creates arguments for the template command, no single
argument can be longer than 255 characters after the input has replaced
the placeholders. The –x option is automatically in effect if –I or –i is used.
If you omit the placeholder string, it defaults to the string { }. Thus we
could write our preceding example as:
xargs –i mv dir1/ ’{}’ dir2/ ’{}’
In a doublebyte locale, placeholder may contain doublebyte characters.
–i placeholder
Behaves like –I, except that the placeholder is optional. If you omit the
placeholder string, it defaults to the string { }. Thus, the previous example
could be written as:
xargs –i mv dir1/ ’{} ’ dir2/’{ } ’
xargs –i /{}/ mv dir1/ ’{}’ dir2/ ’{}
–L number
Specifies that xargs read number lines from stdin and concatenate them
into one long string (with a blank separating each of the original lines).
xargs then appends this string to the command template and runs the
resulting command. This process is repeated until xargs reaches the end of
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