Get APLawrence.com by RSSMacOSX Skills Test
Copyright 2002,2003 A.P. Lawrence
Answers
Answer
xargs
The xargs command is designed to run another command, feeding it arguments in chunks.
If you had several thousand files in a directory, you might not be able to even list the directory with wild cards. While "find" can help (find . -name 'mywild*'), xargs is much more flexible. See the man page for details.
Because Macs are apt to have file names with spaces and other characters that Unix doesn't like, you probably want to use -print0 with find and "-0" with xargs:
find . -print0 | xargs -0 whatever
Next question
Return to Question q0190
Get Complete 305 Question Set
Add your comments