XARGS(1)

📦 version 1.053, in alpine 3.24

🎀 NAME 🎀

okay so bestie, meet xargs (1) from the User Contributed Perl Documentation corner of the universe. its whole iconic job? construct argument list(s) and execute utility. that’s it, that’s the vibe — slay 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

xargs [-0t] [-n num] [-L num] [-s size] [-I repl] [prog [args ...]]

short, cute, and fully loaded — prog [args ...] is optional, and the flags are all listed right there. 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

xargs runs a specified program, or the echo command if none is given. periodt ✨ arguments passed to the target program are read from standard input and are generally separated by spaces. the program is run repeatedly until all arguments have been used up. the number of arguments taken by each invocation of the program can be controlled with various options. iykyk 😌

✨ OPTIONS ✨

the following options are supported:

  • -0 — expect NUL characters as separators instead of spaces. this is useful in cases where arguments may contain a space, e.g. a filename. no cap, filename-with-spaces protection is real 🫶
  • -I replstr — read input one line at a time, replacing all occurrences of the string replstr in the initial arguments with the line read. very demo-coded, very useful 💖
  • -L NUMBER — pass a maximum NUMBER of non-empty lines to the program per invocation. line-by-line cuteness 🌸
  • -n NUMBER — set a maximum NUMBER of arguments to be passed to the program per invocation. arg budget: set 💅
  • -s SIZE — pass a maximum of SIZE bytes of arguments to the program per invocation. byte-sized boundaries, literally 🍓
  • -t — write a listing of the command arguments to standard error before each invocation of the program. transparency era 🔥

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by Gurusamy Sarathy, gsar@umich.edu — iconic behavior, honestly 👑💜

and that’s the whole page, bestie 🫶 this little beauty comes from perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-02-15, and it’s officially XARGS(1). bye 💖

📦 where this page comes from