On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Michael Havens wrote:
> xargs reads the standard input and then runs a command by putting the
> lines read as the new command's command-line arguments.
>
> Isn't that what the pipe would do w/o the xargs command?
No.
xargs makes command-line arguments from the standard output.
Without xargs, the standard output becomes the standard input of the next
command.
See this simple example:
$ echo 1 2 3 | xargs cat
cat: 1: No such file or directory
cat: 2: No such file or directory
cat: 3: No such file or directory
rainier:~/work/invoices$ echo 1 2 3 | cat
1 2 3
Jeremy C. Reed
technical support & remote administration
http://www.pugetsoundtechnology.com/
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