The xargs Utility

xargs

We can use a pipeline and get the -exec action behavior. We should apply the xargs utility for that.

Let’s go through an example. Let’s suppose that we want to find a pattern in the contents of the found files. In this case, the grep utility should receive file paths, but not the plain text. We can apply the pipeline and xargs to solve this task. The solution looks like this:

find ~ -type f | xargs grep "bash"

This command cannot handle files whose names contain spaces and line breaks. We will learn how to solve this problem in later lessons.

Run the commands discussed in this lesson in the terminal below.

The xargs utility constructs a command. The utility takes two things as the input: parameters and text data from the input stream. The parameters come in the first place in the constructed command. Then, all data from the input stream follows.

Let’s come back to our example. Let’s suppose that the find utility finds the ~/.bashrc file. The pipeline passes the file path to the xargs grep "bash" call. The xargs utility receives two parameters in this call: grep and “bash.” Therefore, it constructs the command that starts with these two words. The result is grep "bash".

Then, ...