MPE/iX Shell and Utilities Reference Manual, Vol 2

xargs(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities xargs(1)

If no command template appears on the command line, xargs uses echo by default. When

xargs executes a command, it uses your search rules to ﬁnd the command; this means that

you can run shell scripts as well as normal programs.

Note that the command you want to execute should be in your search

PATH

xargs terminates prematurely if it cannot execute a constructed command or if an executed

command returns a non-zero status value. If an executed command is a shell program, it

should explicitly contain an exit command to avoid returning a non-zero status value by ac-

cident; see sh(1) for details.

xargs also accepts the following options: You can use the following options with any of the

three main options.

–eeofstr

deﬁnes eofstr to represent end-of-ﬁle on the standard input. For example,

-e:::

tells xargs that ::: represents the end of the standard input, even if it is not at the

end of the ﬁle. If there is no –e option, a single underscore (_) marks the end of the

input. If you specify –e without a following string, it indicates that there is no end-

of-ﬁle marker string; this means that _ is taken literally instead of as an end-of-ﬁle

marker. xargs stops reading input when it reaches the speciﬁed end-of-ﬁle marker

or the true end of the ﬁle.

–p prompts you before each command. This turns on the –t option so that you see each

constructed command before it is executed. Then, xargs displays ?..., asking if

you really want to executed this command. If you type a string beginning with y,

xargs goes ahead and executes the command as displayed; otherwise, the command

is not executed, and xargs goes on to construct a new command.

–s size sets the maximum allowable size of an argument list to size characters (where size is

an integer). The value of size must be less than or equal to the system variable

LINE_MAX. The length of the argument list is the length of the entire constructed

command; this includes the length of the command name, the length of each argu-

ment, plus one blank for separating each item on the line.

–t writes each constructed command to the standard error just before executing the

command.

–x terminates xargs if it creates a command that is longer than the size given by the

–s option (or {LINE_MAX}did not specify –s). This option comes into effect auto-

matically if you specify –i or –l.

Commands and Utilities 1-707