xargs command line examples

This article provides usage examples of the xargs linux/unix utility.

xargs is a linux/unix command line utility that reads items from the standard input, delimited by blanks or newlines, and executes a command on each item.

The following are usage examples that show the different ways xargs can be used.

find /path -name *.log | xargs cat

find /path -name *.log | xargs -I% cp % /tmp/

The -I replace-str option causes xargs to replace occurrences of replace-str in the command arguments with items read from standard input.

cut -d: -f1 < /etc/passwd | sort | xargs echo

Labels: unix, howto