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Using xargs

The xargs program takes data from standard input and lets you use it as arguments to another program. To understand how it works, let’s do something incredibly trivial: print out the numbers 1 to 5 with echo, using xargs. You’ll use the seq command, which prints out a sequence of numbers, each on its own line.

$ seq 5 | xargs echo
1 2 3 4 5

What actually happened here? The numbers 1 through 5 were passed as arguments to the echo command. You can see this for yourself with the -t argument:

$ seq 5 | xargs -t echo
echo 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5

If you don’t specify a command, xargs uses echo by default. Test it out:

$ seq 5 | xargs -t
echo 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5

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