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Annotation of 43BSDReno/usr.bin/xargs/xargs.1, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: .\" Copyright (c) 1990 The Regents of the University of California.
                      2: .\" All rights reserved.
                      3: .\"
                      4: .\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
                      5: .\" John B. Roll Jr.
                      6: .\"
                      7: .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted
                      8: .\" provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
                      9: .\" duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation,
                     10: .\" advertising materials, and other materials related to such
                     11: .\" distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed
                     12: .\" by the University of California, Berkeley.  The name of the
                     13: .\" University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived
                     14: .\" from this software without specific prior written permission.
                     15: .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR
                     16: .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED
                     17: .\" WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
                     18: .\"
                     19: .\"    @(#)xargs.1     5.1 (Berkeley) 4/17/90
                     20: .\"
                     21: .TH XARGS 1 "April 17, 1990"
                     22: .UC 7
                     23: .SH NAME
                     24: xargs \- construct argument list(s) and execute utility.
                     25: .SH SYNOPSIS
                     26: .ft B
                     27: xargs [\-t] [\-n number] [\-s size] [utility [argument ...]]
                     28: .ft R
                     29: .SH DESCRIPTION
                     30: The
                     31: .I xargs utility
                     32: reads space, tab, and newline delimited arguments from the standard
                     33: input and executes the specified
                     34: .I utility
                     35: with them as arguments.
                     36: Any arguments specified on the command line are given to the
                     37: .I utility
                     38: upon each invocation, followed by some number of the arguments read
                     39: from standard input.
                     40: The
                     41: .I utility
                     42: is repeatedly executed until standard input is exhausted.
                     43: .PP
                     44: Spaces and tabs may be embedded in arguments using single (`` ' '') or
                     45: double (``"'') quotes or backslashes (``\e'').
                     46: Single or double quotes escape all characters to the next matching quote
                     47: character, backslashes escape the next character.
                     48: Newlines may not be escaped.
                     49: .PP
                     50: The following options are available:
                     51: .TP
                     52: -n number
                     53: Set the maximum number of arguments used from standard input for
                     54: each invocation of the utility.
                     55: An invocation of
                     56: .I utility
                     57: will use less than
                     58: .I number
                     59: standard input arguments if the number of bytes accumulated (see the
                     60: .I \-s
                     61: option) exceeds the specified size or the last invocation of
                     62: .I utility
                     63: has fewer than
                     64: .I number
                     65: arguments remaining.
                     66: The default value for
                     67: .I number
                     68: is 255.
                     69: .TP
                     70: -s size
                     71: Set the maximum number of bytes to which the last component of the
                     72: .I utility
                     73: name, the command-line arguments, and the arguments read in from
                     74: standard input may sum.
                     75: The default value for
                     76: .I size
                     77: is 2048.
                     78: .TP
                     79: -t
                     80: Echo the command to be executed to standard error immediately before it
                     81: is executed.
                     82: .PP
                     83: If no
                     84: .I utility
                     85: is specified,
                     86: .IR echo (1)
                     87: is used.
                     88: .PP
                     89: .I Utility
                     90: should never read from the standard input.
                     91: .PP
                     92: .I Xargs
                     93: exits with 0 if no error occurred, and 1 otherwise.
                     94: .SH "SEE ALSO"
                     95: echo(1)
                     96: .SH STANDARDS
                     97: The
                     98: .I xargs
                     99: utility is expected to be POSIX 1003.2 compliant.

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