10 xargs command example in Linux - Unix tutorial

with and without xargs
you can clearly see that multiline output is converted into single line:
find . -name "*bash*" | xargs
xargs and grep
find . -name "*.java" | xargs grep "Stock"
delete temporary file using find and xargs
find /tmp -name "*.tmp" | xargs rm
xargs -0 to handle space in file name
find /tmp -name "*.tmp" -print0 | xargs -0 rm
xargs and cut command in Unix
cut -d, -f1 smartphones.csv | sort | xargs
Counting number of lines in each file using xargs and find
ls -1 *.txt | xargs wc -l
Passing subset of arguments to xargs in Linux.
when used with xargs you can use flag "-n" to instruct xargs on how many argument it should pass to given command. this xargs command line option is extremely useful on certain situation like repeatedly doing diff etc
ls -1 *.txt | xargs -n 2 echo
avoid "Argument list too long"
xargs in unix or Linux was initially use to avoid "Argument list too long" errors and by using xargs you send sub-list to any command which is shorter than "ARG_MAX" and that's how xargs avoid "Argument list too long" error. You can see current value of "ARG_MAX" by using getconf ARG_MAX.

find –exec vs find + xargs

xargs with find command is much faster than using -exec on find. since -exec runs for each file while xargs operates on sub-list level. to give an example if you need to change permission of 10000 files xargs with find will be almost 10K time faster than find with -exec because xargs change permission of all file at once

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