Preparing output for further processing with Xargs

Conclusion

Backticks on the command line and special characters in filenames hardly ever get along amiably. Additionally, using backticks can cause confusion very quickly what with nested constructs and so on. Fortunately, Xargs helps in almost all cases where backticks fail.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Frank Hofmann and Benjamin Schieder for advice and comments when writing of this article.

Infos

GNU Find Utilities: https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/
FreeBSD Xargs (manpage): http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=xargs
NetBSD Xargs (manpage): http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?xargs
Mac OS X Xargs (source code): https://opensource.apple.com/source/shell_cmds/shell_cmds-17.1/xargs/
Xargs in the Posix standard: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/xargs.html
GNU Xargs options: https://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/manual/html_node/find_html/xargs-options.html
Prips: http://devel.ringlet.net/sysutils/prips/

The Author

Axel Beckert (http://noone.org/abe/) studied biology with a minor in computer science. He is currently working as a Linux system administrator at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is on the board of the Linux User Group Switzerland, and participates in the Debian project. He also maintains the http://planet-commandline.org website.

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