osf1 man page for apply

apply(1)						      General Commands Manual							  apply(1)

NAME
       apply - Applies a command to a set of arguments

SYNOPSIS
       apply [-acharacter] [-number] command argument...

       The apply command runs the specified command on each argument in turn.

OPTIONS
       Identifies  the	character  used instead of the % (percent sign) to designate argument substitution strings.  Specifies the number of argu-
       ments to be passed to command.

DESCRIPTION
       Normally, arguments are chosen individually; the optional number specifies the number of arguments to be passed to command. If number is  0
       (zero), command is run without arguments once for each argument.

       If you include character sequences of the form %n (where n is a digit from 1 to 9) in command, they are replaced by the nth unused argument
       following command when command is executed.  If any such sequences occur, number is ignored, and the number of arguments passed to  command
       is the maximum value of n in command.

       You  can specify a character other than % (percent sign) to designate argument substitution character strings with the -a option; for exam-
       ple, -a@ would indicate that the sequences @1 and @2 were to be replaced by the first and second unused arguments following command.

NOTES
       Shell metacharacters in command may have undesirable effects; it is best to enclose complicated commands in '  ' (single quotes).

       There is no way to pass a % (percent sign) followed immediately by any number if % is the argument expansion character.

EXAMPLES
       The following command is similar to ls: apply echo * The following command compares the file a1 to the file b1, a2 to b2, and so on:  apply
       -2 cmp a1 b1 a2 b2 ...  The following command runs who 5 times: apply -0 who 1 2 3 4 5 The following command links all files in the current
       directory to the directory /usr/joe: apply 'ln %1 /usr/joe' *

SEE ALSO
       Commands:  sh(1), xargs(1)

																	  apply(1)