Linux system xargs command usage

Using the xargs command on a Linux system can solve a lot of problems, especially the xargs command with the find command can play even more amazing results. This article will introduce you to the use of the Linux system xargs command. When

In the process -exec option to use the find command to match the file, find the command will be passed along to all matching files to execute exec. However, some systems have a limit on the length of commands that can be passed to exec, so that after a few minutes of the find command, an overflow error occurs. The error message is usually “the parameter column is too long" or <; parameter column overflow”. This is where the xargs command is used, especially with the find command.

The find command passes the matching file to the xargs command, while the xargs command only gets a portion of the file at a time instead of all, unlike the -exec option. This way it can process the first part of the file first, then the next one, and continue with it.

In some systems, using the -exec option will initiate a corresponding process for processing each matched file, not all of the matched files will be executed as parameters once; in some cases There are too many processes and system performance degradation, so it is not efficient;

There is only one process using the xargs command. In addition, when using the xargs command, whether to get all the parameters at a time, or to get the parameters in batches, and the number of parameters obtained each time will be determined according to the options of the command and the corresponding adjustable parameters in the system kernel.

You can check the return status of xargs to determine what the problem is:

#cut -d: -f1 " /etc/passwd