The xargs tag has no wiki summary.
38
votes
6answers
3k views
When is xargs needed?
The xargs command always confuses me. Is there a general rule that can help me figure out when I need it?
Consider the two examples below:
$ \ls | grep Cases | less
prints the files that match ...
11
votes
7answers
5k views
Using xargs with input from a file
Say I have a file with the following
bob
john
sue
Now these directly corrospond to (in this case) URL pattern such as http://example.com/persons/bob.tar, john.tar, sue.tar.
I would like to take ...
11
votes
2answers
484 views
gnu find and masking the {} for some shells - which?
The man page for gnu find states:
-exec command ;
[...] The string `{}' is replaced by the current
file name being processed everywhere it occurs in the
arguments to the command, ...
10
votes
6answers
3k views
xargs with stdin/stdout redirection
I would like to run:
./a.out < x.dat > x.ans
for each *.dat file in the directory A.
Sure, it could be done by bash/python/whatsoever script, but I like to write sexy one-liner. All I could ...
10
votes
2answers
1k views
bash find xargs grep only single occurence
Maybe it's a bit strange - and maybe there are other tools to do this but, well..
I am using the following classic bash command to find all files which contain some string:
find . -type f | xargs ...
9
votes
6answers
881 views
Why does xargs cause apt-get to abort?
I'm trying to remove a list of packages from a file. I'm using the following command:
cat packages | xargs sudo apt-get remove
packages is my file containing a list of packages I want to remove. ...
8
votes
2answers
104 views
Piping nothing to xargs
I have a script that may in some circumstances have nothing on stdout. At the end of the script, I pass the lines I have to another command using xargs. My problem is, when there is nothing on stdout, ...
7
votes
3answers
236 views
What's wrong with this xargs command?
Consider the output:
% { echo one; echo two; echo three; } | xargs -I{} -L1 echo test-{}
test-{} one
test-{} two
test-{} three
Why doesn't {} get substituted as per the manual page (and my memory, ...
6
votes
3answers
1k views
Find -exec + vs find | xargs. Which one to choose?
I understand that the -exec can take a + option to mimic the behaviour of xargs. Is there any situation where you'd prefer one form over the other?
I personally tend to prefer the first form, if ...
6
votes
4answers
291 views
Find images by size: find / file / awk
I've been trying to find png image files a certain height (over 500px). I know that file will return image dimensions. Example:
$ file TestImg1a.png
TestImg1a.png: PNG image data, 764 x 200, ...
6
votes
1answer
53 views
How to do `head` and `tail` on null-delimited input in bash?
find command can output names of files as a null-delimited strings (if -print0 is provided), and xargs can consume them with -0 option turned on. But in between, it's hard to manipulate that ...
6
votes
4answers
377 views
Spreading stdin to parallel processes
I have a task that processes a list of files on stdin. The start-up time of the program is substantial, and the amount of time each file takes varies widely. I want to spawn a substantial number of ...
5
votes
4answers
799 views
recursively chmod
I was trying to chmod folders and files with:
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
But I was wondering:
How to do it in one line using find and excluding the ...
5
votes
3answers
1k views
How to make `xargs` ignore child's exit and keep processing further
I sometimes run long xargs jobs overnight and it is really annoying to discover in the morning that xargs died somewhere in the middle, for example because of a segmentation fault in one single ...
5
votes
2answers
388 views
Is using xargs faster than not using it?
Is this faster:
find /tmp -name core -type f | xargs /bin/rm -f
than doing this:
find /tmp -name core -type f -exec /bin/rm -f {} \;
So would using xargs increase overall speed?
(I got the ...
5
votes
2answers
796 views
How to stop xargs from badly merging output from multiple processes?
I'm using xargs with the option --max-args=0 (alternatively -P 0).
However, the output of the processes is merged into the stdout stream without regard for proper line separation. So I'll often end ...
5
votes
2answers
441 views
Batch copy to multiple directories
I have about 9000 files in a directory and I want to mv them into 90 files in 100 directories by filename order, ignoring any remainder. In Copy multiple files from filename X to filename Y?, Caleb ...
4
votes
2answers
195 views
Append line to many files
I want to add some text to over 200,000 files
I am trying this
find . -name *.txt -print | xargs -I % echo "hello world" >> %
But nothing is happening. When i run find . -name *.txt it work ...
4
votes
4answers
2k views
How to search for a word in entire content of a directory in linux
need to search for something in entire content
I am trying:
find . | xargs grep word
I get error:
xargs: unterminated quote
How to achieve this? Thanks.
4
votes
4answers
966 views
Xargs and rm with a *
I am trying to execute the following command
ls -d a* | xargs -i sudo rm -rf {}/*
The problem is that when I add the /* part the command does not work. I want to remove the directory contents (not ...
4
votes
3answers
183 views
Use command grep and locate
How I can make the grep command locate certain words in the files specified by the routes found by the locate command?
locate my.cnf | grep user
(I want that grep command search the word "user" ...
4
votes
4answers
325 views
xargs and vi - “Input is not from a terminal”
I have about 10 php.ini files on my system, located all over the place, and I wanted to quickly browse through them. I tried this command:
locate php.ini | xargs vi
But vi warns me Input is not ...
4
votes
3answers
3k views
Pass xargs argument as a string to another command with '>'?
Suppose I have a bunch of files in /tmp/.
I do
find . -type f | xargs -iFILES
And I want to do a md5sum in each file, outputting to a file with the same name, but with .md5 extension.
find . ...
4
votes
4answers
892 views
copying multiple files to multiple directories
I've a problem copying many files in different directories. Let me explain better:
Let's say I have the following in a dir:
$ ls
file1 file2 file3 file4 file5 dir1 dir2 dir3
and I want to copy ...
4
votes
1answer
196 views
Why did using xargs fail in this case?
I tried to understand the usage of xargs and did the following experiment.
ls | xargs | touch
I want to refresh the files dates and directoris in the curent directory.
Though it is a bit silly,for ...
4
votes
2answers
371 views
Reformatting a large number of XML files
I'm manipulating a large number of XML files scattered throughout a nested directory structure. I tried the following (which almost works):
$ find . -name "*.xml" -type f | xargs -- xmllint --format
...
4
votes
2answers
196 views
Decrypt files encrypted with gpg using xargs
I have a lot of files encrypted with gpg. All files have the same password. Is it possible to use xargs to decrypt files?
ls | xargs -n 1 gpg asks for the password for every file.
4
votes
2answers
141 views
Why doesn't this xargs command work?
I wanted to delete all .sh extensions so did this:
ls *.sh | xargs -I {} mv {} `basename {} .sh`
However it doesn't work, it behaves like basename returns unchanged file name.
Why is it behaving ...
4
votes
1answer
960 views
“Argument list too long”: How do I deal with it, without changing my command?
When I run a command like ls */*/*/*/*.jpg, I get the error
-bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long
I know why this happens: it is because there is a kernel limit on the amount of space for ...
3
votes
3answers
104 views
Concatenating thousands of files: > vs >>
I found two seemingly contradictory answers on StackOverflow to the following questions:
Concatenating Thousands of Text Files Across Hundreds of Directories (while keeping some structure)
How do I ...
3
votes
2answers
256 views
How to delete commands in history matching a given string?
I need to delete all commands in my history matching a string. I've tried:
$ history | grep searchstring | cut -d" " -f2 | history -d
-bash: history: -d: option requires an argument
$ history | grep ...
3
votes
4answers
825 views
Remove numbers from filenames
I've a problem modifying the files' names in my Music/ directory.
I have a list of names like these:
$ ls
01 American Idiot.mp3
01 Articolo 31 - Domani Smetto.mp3
01 Bohemian rapsody.mp3
01 Eye of ...
3
votes
2answers
186 views
Get the complement of the result of an ls command
Let's say I have a directory with multiple files, all of which are either binary files (files with no declared extensions) and source files (.c extension). I do this:
$ ls
and get:
README.md ...
3
votes
3answers
2k views
How can I pass strings with single quotes to grep?
My desired outcome is the following: to recursively search a directory looking for a given string in all found files. The following command is my usual port of call:
find ./ | xargs grep -ns 'foobar'
...
3
votes
4answers
2k views
Sorting the output of “find”?
I need to be able to alphabetically sort the output of find before piping it to a command. Entering | sort | between didn't work, so what could I do?
find folder1 folder2 -name "*.txt" -print0 | ...
3
votes
6answers
737 views
Grep a directory and return list with line numbers
I'm currently trying to learn more about bash scripting and all of that fun stuff, and I pieced together this little command:
find $path | xargs grep -n $pattern | awk '{print $1}'
While this DOES ...
3
votes
3answers
154 views
Use find to execute series of commands
I want to examine a directory and execute a command for each matching folder. The following find correctly returns the list I'm looking for.
find . -maxdepth 1 -name "*.bitbucket"
For each item ...
3
votes
2answers
1k views
How to open multiple files from `find` output?
I know I can open multiple files found in a dir like so:
find -name *.foo -xargs <command> {} \;
This works, but when trying to open a bunch of textfiles in gedit at the same time, it opens ...
3
votes
4answers
983 views
rename character “â” of directory name?
I'm trying to rename rename character â of directory name to be blank. For example, directory with name how-â8093-to.
This is the command I use, including some other modification
find . -type d | ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views
Remove files, which provided by pipe
I have this command chain:
find . -print | grep php | xargs grep 'eval' -sl | xargs wc -l | grep ' [1-2][0-9] '
This provide me this output:
14 ./includes/js/calendar/lang/vgju.php
18 ...
2
votes
2answers
5k views
using xargs to grep multiple patterns
I have a file that has terms I want to grep for, with each term being one line in the file. I was thinking I could do this with xargs. What I'm able to glean from examples from the man page like this
...
2
votes
3answers
737 views
untar a directory of *.tgz files using a wildcard
I've got a directory that looks like
$ ls
Broad_hapmap3_r2_Affy6_cels_excluded.tgz DINGO.tgz GIGAS.tgz index.html IONIC.tgz passing_cels_sample_map.txt ...
2
votes
3answers
627 views
create md5 hash from a recursive file listing when some paths have spaces
I need to create an md5 hash of every directory and file inside of one main directory. The only thing that is keeping me from success is figuring out a way around files with a space in the path.
I am ...
2
votes
3answers
1k views
How to delete files filtered out by awk
I have the following files in a directory:
-rw-r--r-- 1 smsc sys 46 Apr 22 12:09 bills.50.1.3G.MO.X.20120422120453.Z
-rw-r--r-- 1 smsc sys 28 Apr 22 12:15 bills.50.1.3G.MO.X.20120422120953.Z
...
2
votes
3answers
104 views
`solaris + xargs command for solaris
the command
find /tmp -name 'core*' -type f -print0 | xargs -0
works fine on Linux,
but xargs -0 option is not legal on Solaris
what is the equivalent option ( xargs? ) for Solaris 10
second ...
2
votes
3answers
78 views
How to copy a list of files and adjust destination filenames on the fly?
When I don't need to adjust destination filenames I can do something like this:
$ find -type f -name '*.pat' -print0 | xargs -O cp -t /path/to/dest
It is safe because the filenames may even ...
2
votes
2answers
236 views
xargs grep suggestion
grep -v "\<Swap" instruments.log | awk '{ idx=index($0, "MasterId="); masterId=substr($0, idx+length("MasterId=")+1); masterId=substr(masterId,1,index(masterId,"L")-3); print masterId; }' | xargs ...
2
votes
2answers
279 views
Inner function call with xargs parameters
I am trying to create a file occurent within my /tmp directory of each file containing a speicific string.
The problem is that the call to basename {} does not seem to work. Neither this, neither ...
2
votes
1answer
349 views
why isn't xargs parsing my input correctly?
Ive been trying to write a shell script that will interface with cmus and then notify me of the track info using notify-send. Right now it is not working mainly because xargs does not seem to pass 2 ...
2
votes
1answer
172 views
xargs : using same argument in multiple commands
Am trying to write a one-liner that can probe the output of df -h and alert when one of the partitions is out [or almost] of space. It's the part using xargs that kicking me in the ass now...
echo 95 ...
