APPLY(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

Okay bestie, welcome to APPLY(1) from the General Commands Manual 🫶 — this is the page for apply — apply a command to a set of arguments. That's the whole vibe: you bring a command, it gets applied to args. Iconic.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

apply [-#] [-d] [-a magic] command argument ...

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

apply runs the named command on each given argument in turn. No cap.

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 argument. In this case, the largest digit number of arguments are discarded for each execution of command.

The options are as follows:

• -# — Normally arguments are taken singly; the optional number -# specifies the number of arguments to be passed to command. If the number is zero, command is run, without arguments, once for each argument. If any sequences of “%d” occur in command, the -# option is ignored.
• -a magic — Use magic as the magic character instead of the default %.
• -d — Debug mode. Print commands to the standard output but do not actually execute them.

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• SHELL — Pathname of shell to use. If this variable is not defined, the Bourne shell is used.

🎀 FILES 🎀

• /bin/sh — default shell.

✨ EXAMPLES ✨

Operate similar to ls(1):

$ apply echo *

Compare the a* files to the b* files:

$ apply -2 cmp a1 b1 a2 b2 a3 b3

Run who(1) five times:

$ apply -0 who 1 2 3 4 5

Link all files in the current directory to the directory /home/joe:

$ apply 'ln %1 /home/joe' *

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

sh(1), xargs(1).

👑 HISTORY 👑

The apply command appeared in 4.2BSD.

💖 AUTHORS 💖

Rob Pike.

💀 BUGS 💀

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

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This page is APPLY(1) from Debian, dated September 8, 2014 — bye bestie, slay responsibly 💅✨