Sponsored Content
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Difference between using xargs and backticks Post 302480403 by Chubler_XL on Tuesday 14th of December 2010 08:57:49 PM
Old 12-14-2010
Of course xargs supports large filecounts, but putting that difference aside there would be extra overhead in loading and executing the xargs binary to start with, but this should be fairly minor unless your doing the same thing many times.

With GUN xargs you also get support for files with spaces in their names (via -0 parameter and -print0 in find). You can also suppress the run if the argument list is empty (via -r parameter).
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Difference between xargs and exec

Hi, I have tried both the options in small dummy scripts, but somehow i can't differentiate between the two. find . -name H* -exec ls -l {} \; find . -name H* | xargs ls -l Both work the ditto way. Any help is appreciated. (19 Replies)
Discussion started by: vibhor_agarwali
19 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

Perl - backticks v system in if statements

Can someone explain the difference between backticks and system when evaluated in these if statements: sub getDate { print "start date\n"; if ( system("/bin/date") ) { print "can't get date\n"; exit(2); } print "finish date\n"; } Returns the following: start date Thu... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: gjkeenan
5 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Backticks within backticks?

Hi, I'm trying to do something like this: range= `expr `date '+%m'` - 1` and it does not work. How can I tell it to evaluate an expression within another expression evaluation? I was at first worried that `date '+%m'` would return a string but apparently expr does the math okay normally, so the... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: jeriryan87
3 Replies

4. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

sed: removing backticks from certain lines

Hi, I would like to change some lines in my mysql-dump, because there a syntax problems with some version of mysql. I 'd like to change USE ´someDatabase´; to USE someDatabase; (without backticks) using the sed command in the shell Thanks & best regards Bernd (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: bjb
5 Replies

5. AIX

Difference in Using xargs

Hi , Can somebody explain what is the difference in the below commands.. when using Xargs its giving all the hidden files and is it something xargs will do recursive searching or parsing ? find . -type f -links 1 | xargs ls -li find . -type f -links 1 | ls -li (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: Karthikeyan K
1 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

Am I abusing backticks?

I'm always concerned I might be abusing backticks within my scripts. A current script I'm writing has this for example: stripscriptname=`echo $scriptname | sed 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/'` stripsearch=`echo $searchpattern | tr -d ' ,/'` Both of these variables are set inside the script (in fact,... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: mglenney
2 Replies

7. Programming

difference bewteen pipe, xargs, and exec

I have read several docs on these on the web and looked at examples. I can't figure out the difference. In some cases you use one or the other or you combine them. can someone help me understand this? (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: guessingo
1 Replies

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

SSH and Backticks [solved]

I have been testing a new script and cannot figure out why my `cat spath` will not execute on the remote machine? sudo ssh -p 22344 -o "PasswordAuthentication no" -o "HostbasedAuthentication yes" -l testuser 192.168.1.6 "find `cat spath` -depth" cat: spath: No such file or directory but... (0 Replies)
Discussion started by: metallica1973
0 Replies

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Difference b/w xargs and "-exec" in Find

Hi, What is the difference between the following commands find . -type f -exec grep 'abc' {} \; and find . -type f | xargs grep 'abc' Appreciate your help. (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: bobbygsk
2 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

Nesting backticks

I'm trying to make a dialog window that prints the output of grep that takes the output of find. Unfortunately my nested backticks don't work. Here is the dialog window: dialog --stdout --title "test" --backtitle "test" --msgbox "Test:\n `grep -l "${tablica}" `find $string``" 16 60I think I... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: Starting_Leaf
2 Replies
XARGS(1L)																 XARGS(1L)

NAME
xargs - build and execute command lines from standard input SYNOPSIS
xargs [-0prtx] [-e[eof-str]] [-i[replace-str]] [-l[max-lines]] [-n max-args] [-s max-chars] [-P max-procs] [--null] [--eof[=eof-str]] [--replace[=replace-str]] [--max-lines[=max-lines]] [--interactive] [--max-chars=max-chars] [--verbose] [--exit] [--max-procs=max-procs] [--max-args=max-args] [--no-run-if-empty] [--version] [--help] [command [initial-arguments]] DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the GNU version of xargs. xargs reads arguments from the standard input, delimited by blanks (which can be pro- tected with double or single quotes or a backslash) or newlines, and executes the command (default is /bin/echo) one or more times with any initial-arguments followed by arguments read from standard input. Blank lines on the standard input are ignored. 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. OPTIONS --null, -0 Input filenames 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 arguments might contain white space, quote marks, or backslashes. The GNU find -print0 option produces input suitable for this mode. --eof[=eof-str], -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 eof-str is omitted, there is no end of file string. If this option is not given, the end of file string defaults to "_". --help Print a summary of the options to xargs and exit. --replace[=replace-str], -i[replace-str] Replace occurences of replace-str in the initial arguments with names read from standard input. Also, unquoted blanks do not termi- nate arguments. If replace-str is omitted, it defaults to "{}" (like for `find -exec'). Implies -x and -l 1. --max-lines[=max-lines], -l[max-lines] Use at most max-lines nonblank input lines per command line; max-lines defaults to 1 if omitted. Trailing blanks cause an input line to be logically continued on the next input line. Implies -x. --max-args=max-args, -n 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. --interactive, -p Prompt the user about whether to run each command line and read a line from the terminal. Only run the command line if the response starts with `y' or `Y'. Implies -t. --no-run-if-empty, -r 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. --max-chars=max-chars, -s 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 default is as large as possible, up to 20k characters. --verbose, -t Print the command line on the standard error output before executing it. --version Print the version number of xargs and exit. --exit, -x Exit if the size (see the -s option) is exceeded. --max-procs=max-procs, -P 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 with -P; otherwise chances are that only one exec will be done. SEE ALSO
find(1L), locate(1L), locatedb(5L), updatedb(1) Finding Files (on-line in Info, or printed) XARGS(1L)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:17 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy