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Full Discussion: Understanding Xargs
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Understanding Xargs Post 303010086 by scrutinizerix on Tuesday 26th of December 2017 08:56:37 AM
Old 12-26-2017
Understanding Xargs

I'm struggling to understand the man page entry about xargs in conjunction with the option -I. It states:

Quote:
Execute utility for each input line, replacing one or more occur-
rences of replstr in up to replacements (or 5 if no -R flag is
specified) arguments to utility with the entire line of input
And the description reads:

Quote:
The xargs utility reads space, tab, newline and end-of-file delimited
strings from the standard input and executes utility with the strings as
arguments.
Am I correct interpreting that as the fact that if no specified otherwise xargs -I can pass to a command following it no more than 5 arguments (a.k.a "strings") each of them containing unlimited number of occurrences of the data to be replaced using that command?

Furthermore what is a string in UNIX?

Example:
pass a list of highest level objects of current directory to some command

Code:
ls . | xargs some_command

Does ls return one string comprising multiple lines? How many arguments that passes for? Or is one line = 1 string? 1 argument?

Moderator's Comments:
Mod Comment Thread moved. Please post your questions in the appropriate sub-forum. Thank you.
 

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tsort(1)						      General Commands Manual							  tsort(1)

NAME
tsort - Sorts an unordered list of ordered pairs (topological sort) SYNOPSIS
tsort [file] STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows: tsort: XCU5.0 Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags. OPTIONS
None OPERANDS
Pathname of a test file to be ordered. If no file operand is specified, tsort reads standard input. DESCRIPTION
The tsort command reads from file or standard input an unordered list of ordered pairs, builds an ordered list, and writes it to standard output. [Tru64 UNIX] For creating a subroutine library, do not use tsort; use the following command in its place: % ar -ts file.a The input file should contain pairs of nonempty strings separated by spaces. Pairs of different items indicate a relative order. Pairs of identical items indicate presence, but no relative order. [Tru64 UNIX] You can use tsort to sort the output of the lorder command. [Tru64 UNIX] If file contains an odd number of fields, tsort writes the error message: tsort: Specify an even number of data fields. NOTES
The LC_COLLATE environment variable does not affect the actions of tsort. EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: Successful completion. An error occurred. EXAMPLES
To create a subroutine library, enter: lorder charin.o scanfld.o scan.o scanln.o | tsort | xargs ar qv libsubs.a (Enter the command entirely on one line, not on two lines as shown above.) This creates a subroutine library named libsubs.a that contains charin.o, scanfld.o, scan.o, and scanln.o. The ordering of the object mod- ules in the library is important. The ld command requires each module to precede all the other modules that it calls or references. The lorder and tsort commands together add the subroutines to the library in the proper order. Suppose that scan.o calls scanfld.o and scanln.o. scanfld.o also calls charin.o. First, the lorder command creates a list of pairs that shows these dependencies: charin.o charin.o scanfld.o scanfld.o scan.o scan.o scanln.o scanln.o scanfld.o charin.o scanln.o charin.o scan.o scanfld.o Next, the | (vertical bar) sends this list to the tsort command, which converts it into the ordering you need: scan.o scanfld.o scanln.o charin.o Note that each module precedes the module it calls. charin.o, which does not call another module, is last. The second | (vertical bar) then sends this list to xargs, which constructs and runs the following ar command: ar qv libsubs.a scan.o scanfld.o scanln.o charin.o This ar command creates the properly ordered library. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect the execution of tsort: Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization vari- ables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables. Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multibyte characters in arguments). Determines the locale for the for- mat and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error. Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES. SEE ALSO
Commands: ar(1), lorder(1), xargs(1) Standards: standards(5) tsort(1)
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