man xargs

NAME
       xargs - build and execute command lines from standard input


SYNOPSIS
       xargs  [-0prtx] [-E eof-str] [-e[eof-str]] [--eof[=eof-str]] [--null] [-d delimiter] [--delimiter delimiter] [-I replace-
       str] [-i[replace-str]] [--replace[=replace-str]] [-l[max-lines]] [-L max-lines] [--max-lines[=max-lines]]  [-n  max-args]
       [--max-args=max-args]  [-s  max-chars]  [--max-chars=max-chars]  [-P  max-procs]  [--max-procs=max-procs] [--interactive]
       [--verbose] [--exit] [--no-run-if-empty] [--arg-file=file] [--version] [--help] [command [initial-arguments]]


DESCRIPTION
       This manual page documents the GNU version of xargs.  xargs reads items from the  standard  input,  delimited  by  blanks
       (which  can  be  protected with double or single quotes or a backslash) or newlines, and executes the command (default is
       /bin/echo) one or more times with any initial-arguments followed by items read from standard input.  Blank lines  on  the
       standard input are ignored.


       Because Unix filenames can contain blanks and newlines, this default behaviour is often problematic; filenames containing
       blanks and/or newlines are incorrectly processed by xargs.  In these situations it is better  to  use  the  `-0'  option,
       which  prevents such problems.   When using this option you will need to ensure that the program which produces the input
       for xargs also uses a null character as a separator.  If that program is GNU find for example, the `-print0' option  does
       this for you.


       If  any  invocation  of  the  command exits with a status of 255, xargs will stop immediately without reading any further
       input.  An error message is issued on stderr when this happens.