Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 14:04:33 -0500 From: "David S. Jackson" <deepbsd@earthlink.net> To: Danny <lists@brenius.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, deepbsd@earthlink.net Subject: Re: Shell guru needed.(xargs question) Message-ID: <20030103190433.GB1925@sylvester.dsj.net> In-Reply-To: <003301c2b340$7e473570$7801a8c0@afi> References: <200301030103.h0313b67012698@labs.unixhideout.com> <20030103152501.GA1925@sylvester.dsj.net> <003301c2b340$7e473570$7801a8c0@afi>
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On Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 10:55:09AM -0500 Danny <lists@brenius.com> wrote:
> Could you please give another realworld example of using xargs and
> your definition of it. I had a glance through man xargs, but I enjoy input
> from humans that use it as well. :)
Xargs is pretty neat. You have to remember that there are different
implementations of it, too, so xargs on Linux would probably be
different than xargs on *BSD (it always is different in my experience).
The differences would mainly be in switches and default behavior.
I use xargs with lots of different utilities, just depending on what I
need to do with whatever files I'm catching. For example, let's say I
wanted to rename some files:
locate *.PDF | xargs -I % mv % `basename % .PDF`.pdf
It's handy if you have a bunch of files in one directory that you want
to check somehow:
ls *.{jpg,gif} | xargs -J % file % | grep -v 'JPEG\|GIF'
Moving files to another directory is a popular use:
locate *.suf | xargs -J % mv % /path/to/dir
Note that you do not always need to use xargs.
locate *.PDF | while read name; do
mv $name ${name%.PDF}.pdf
done
There's lots more you can do with it. Your imagination is almost your
only limitation. :-)
--
David S. Jackson dsj@dsj.net
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And now for something completely the same.
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