command-definition.xargs.html Maven / Gradle / Ivy
The xargs utility reads items from the standard input, delimited by blanks
(which can be protected with double or single quotes or a backslash) or
newlines, and executes the command (default is /bin/echo) one or more times with
any initial arguments followed by items read from standard input. Blank lines on
the standard input are ignored.
Because Unix filenames can contain blanks and newlines, this default behaviour
is often problematic; filenames containing blanks and/or newlines are
incorrectly processed by xargs. In these situations it is better to use the
--null option, which prevents such problems. When using this option you will
need to ensure that the program which produces the input for xargs also uses a
null character as a separator. If that program is find for example, the --print0
option does this for you.
If any invocation of the command exits with a status of 255, xargs will stop
immediately without reading any further input. An error message
is issued on stderr when this happens.