On 10/22/07, Hall Nation <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I just couldn't get what was described abt xargs in man ,,, I mean I need it > in simple terms.. (layman terms)
xargs has nothing to do with X11, first of all. The "x" in this case means "trans", as in "transpose", which is the operation that takes a vertical column and turns it into a horizontal row. Say you have a file named x.txt with these lines in it: x1 x2 x3 Now say you run this: xargs echo <x.txt The xargs command will build a new command for you and run it on your behalf, by reading each line of its input (file x.txt) and turning it into an argument. So it will run echo x1 x2 x3 and you will get x1 x2 x3 output to your terminal. find . | xargs grep is how you do a grep of a bunch of files when they might be in subdirectories. "find ." will output their names, one to a line, and xargs turns them into arguments to the grep command. -- Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
