ultrix man page for apply

apply(1)						      General Commands Manual							  apply(1)

Name
       apply - apply a command to a set of arguments

Syntax
       apply [-ac] [-n] command args...

Description
       The program runs the named command on each argument arg in turn.  Normally arguments are chosen singly; the optional number n specifies the
       number of arguments to be passed to command.  If n is zero, command is run without arguments once for each arg.	Character sequences of the
       form  %d  in  command,  where  d  is a digit from 1 to 9, are replaced by the d'th following unused arg.  If any such sequences occur, n is
       ignored, and the number of arguments passed to command is the maximum value of d in command.  The percent sign (%) character can be changed
       by the -a option.

Examples
       The following command line is similar to
       apply echo *
       The next example compares the specified a files to the specified b files:
       apply -2 cmp a1 b1 a2 b2 ...
       The following example run the command 5 times and links all files in the current directory to the directory
       apply 'ln %1 /usr/joe' *

Restrictions
       Shell metacharacters in command may have unexpected results; it is best to enclose complicated commands in single quotes (' ').

       You cannot pass a literal, '%2', if the percent sign (%) is the argument expansion character.

See Also
       sh(1)

																	  apply(1)