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

stdin if there are fewer than number lines left in the file the last time the
command is run, xargs just uses what is there.
With this option, a line must contain at least one nonblank character; blank
lines are skipped and do not count toward the number of lines being added
to the template. xargs considers a line to end at the first newline character,
unless the last character of the line is a blank or a tab; in this case, the
current line is considered to extend to the end of the next non-empty line.
If you omit the –L or –l option, the default number of lines read from stdin
is 1. The –x option is automatically in effect if –l is used.
–l number
Acts like the –L option, but the number argument is optional. number
defaults to 1.
–n number
Specifies xargs is to read the given number of arguments from stdin and
put them on the end of the command template. For example:
xargs –n 2 diff
obtains two arguments from stdin, appends them to the diff command, and
then runs the command. It repeats this process until stdin runs out of
arguments. When you use this option, xargs considers arguments to be
strings of characters separated from each other by white-space characters
(blanks, horizontal tabs, or newlines). Empty lines are always skipped (that
is, they don’t count as arguments). If you want an input argument to contain
blanks or horizontal tabs, enclose it in double quotes or single quotes. If the
argument contains a double-quote character ("), you must enclose the
argument in single quotes. Conversely, if the argument contains a single
quote (’) (or an apostrophe), you must enclose the argument in double
quotes. You can also put a backslash (\) in front of a character to tell xargs
to ignore any special meaning the character may have (for example,
white-space characters, or quotes).
xargs reads fewer than number arguments if:
xargs
v The accumulated command line length exceeds the size specified by the
–s option (or {LINE_MAX} if you did not specify –s)
v The last iteration has more than zero, but less than number arguments
remaining
If you do not specify the –n option, the default number of arguments read
from stdin is 1.
Typically, an xargs command uses exactly one of the options just described. If you
specify more than one, xargs uses the one that appears last on the command line.
If the command has none of these options, xargs keeps reading input until it fills up
its internal buffer, concatenating arguments to the end of the command template.
When the buffer is full, xargs runs the resulting command, and then starts
constructing a new command. For example:
ls | xargs echo
prints the names of files in the working directory as one long line. When you invoke
xargs this way, the total length of all arguments must be less than the size
specified by the –s option.
Chapter 2. Shell command descriptions 817