Next: Interspersing File Names, Previous: Unusual Characters in File Names, Up: Multiple Files
xargs
gives you control over how many arguments it passes to
the command each time it executes it. By default, it uses up to
ARG_MAX
- 2k, or 128k, whichever is smaller, characters per
command. It uses as many lines and arguments as fit within that
limit. The following options modify those values.
--no-run-if-empty
-r
--max-lines
[=
max-lines]-L
max-lines-l
[max-lines]--max-args=
max-args-n
max-argsxargs
will exit.
--max-chars=
max-chars-s
max-charsxargs
and how this is affected by any other options. The POSIX limits shown
when you do this have already been adjusted to take into account the
size of your environment variables.
The largest allowed value is system-dependent, and is calculated as
the argument length limit for exec, less the size of your environment,
less 2048 bytes of headroom. If this value is more than 128KiB,
128Kib is used as the default value; otherwise, the default value is
the maximum.
--max-procs=
max-procs-P
max-procsxargs
will run as many processes as
possible at a time. Use the ‘-n’, ‘-s’, or ‘-L’ option
with ‘-P’; otherwise chances are that the command will be run
only once.