A small primer on xargs

In a nutshell, xargs is an alternative to fully expanded shell for loops. Given the right options, xargs can be made to exhibit for-loop-like behavior. But out of the box, it is a way to pipe a bunch of arguments to a single command in one fell swoop.

This can save a great deal of compute time if you are piping a long list of arguments to a command rather than iterating over them one at a time.

In  A small primer on xargs you will find a deep explanation on xargs usage. The article teach me a bunch of tricks I am not aware of (and I know Unix from ’93….yes, 1993…).

Keep an eye to it!