Commands using xargs sorted by votes

Commands using xargs (769)

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Doing some floating point calculations with rounding (e.g. at the 3rd decimal)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

echo '123/7' |bc -l |xargs printf "%.3f\n"

mrttlemonde · 2009-03-18 14:20:32 5
Use find to get around Argument list too long problem

Can be used for other commands as well, replace rm with ls. It is easy to make this shorter but if the filenames involved have spaces, you will need to do use find's "-print0" option in conjunction with xargs's "-0" option. Otherwise the shell that xargs uses to execute the "rm" command line will treat the space as a token separator, thereby treating the name as two (or more) names. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ grep foo bar/*
-bash: /usr/bin/grep: /bin/sh: bad interpreter: Argument list too long
```
1

find . -name 'junkfiles-*' -print0 | xargs -0 rm

kancer · 2009-03-26 15:38:42 7
Clean the /boot directory

On Fedora clean the boot directory; erase older kernel
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

rpm -q kernel-2* | grep -v $(uname -r) | xargs yum erase -y

Nick · 2009-03-28 21:41:15 11
Delete more than one month old thumbnails from home directory

By time thumbnail images in ~/thumbnails take up too much space, this command will help deleting old ones. Find options explained: -type f : find files only, not directories -atime +30 : last accessed more than 30 days ago
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find ~/.thumbnails/ -type f -atime +30 -print0 | xargs -0 rm

alperyilmaz · 2009-03-30 04:23:07 12
Recursive Line Count
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find ./ -not -type d | xargs wc -l | cut -c 1-8 | awk '{total += $1} END {print total}'

benschw · 2009-04-01 15:14:15 14
sync svn working copy and remote repository (auto adding new files)

Lists the local files that are not present in the remote repository (lines beginning with ?) and add them. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ svn status | grep '^?'
?      INFO
?      src/svn-commit.tmp
?      src/game/Game.java
?      src/game/character/Hero.java

$ svn status | grep '^?' | awk '{ print $2; }' | xargs svn add
$ svn ci

A      INFO
A      src/svn-commit.tmp
A      src/game/Game.java
A      src/game/character/Hero.java
```
1

svn status | grep '^?' | awk '{ print $2; }' | xargs svn add

unixmonkey4200 · 2009-04-10 21:55:37 9
Find and delete oldest file of specific types in directory tree

This works on my ubuntu/debian machines. I suspect other distros need some tweaking of sort and cut. I am sure someone could provide a shorter/faster version.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find / $ -name "*.log" -o -name "*.mylogs" $ -exec ls -lrt {} \; | sort -k6,8 | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f8- | tr -d '\n' | xargs -0 rm

ghazz · 2009-05-10 10:45:48 8
change ownership en masse of files owned by a specific user, including files and directories with spaces

In the example, uid 0 is root. foo:foo are the user:group you want to make owner and group. '.' is the "current directory and below." -print0 and -0 indicate that filenames and directories "are terminated by a null character instead of by whitespace."
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find . -uid 0 -print0 | xargs -0 chown foo:foo

abcde · 2009-05-27 19:52:13 6
list all crontabs for users

additionally use "find /etc/cron*" for cronscripts Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd | grep -vE "#" | xargs -i{} crontab -u {} -l
# m h  dom mon dow   command
# mysql backup
0 6 * * * /scripts/automysqlbackup.sh /dev/null 2>&1

no crontab for daemon
no crontab for bin
no crontab for sys
no crontab for sync
no crontab for games
```
1

cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd | grep -vE "#" | xargs -i{} crontab -u {} -l

hoberion · 2009-06-18 16:49:52 9
Extract the emoticons regex from a running skype process

Skype has an internal regex which depicts the emoticons it supports. However you cannot simply search the binary file for it. This small 181 character line will do just that, provided skype is running. And of course, only works in linux. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
(...) |$banghead$|$bear$|$beer$|$blush$|$bow$|$bricklayers$|$brokenheart$|$bug$|$bye$|$cake$|$call$|$cash$|$chuckle$| (...)
```
1

S=`pidof skype`;grep heap /proc/$S/maps|cut -f1 -d' '|awk -F- '{print "0x" $1 " 0x" $2}'|xargs echo "du me t ">l;gdb -batch -p $S -x l>/dev/null 2>&1;strings t|grep \(smirk|head -n1

alvieboy · 2009-06-26 20:03:17 6
follow the content of all files in a directory

The `-q' arg forces tail to not output the name of the current file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find dir/ -type f | xargs tail -fqn0

chickenzilla · 2009-08-21 18:05:12 4

locate a filename, make sure it exists and display it with full details

use the locate command to find files on the system and verify they exist (-e) then display each one in full details. Show Sample Output

locate -e somefile | xargs ls -l

nadavkav · 2009-08-23 13:16:59 3

Ultimate current directory usage command

A little bit smaller, faster and should handle files with special characters in the name.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name '.' -execdir du -0 -s {} + | sort -znr | gawk 'BEGIN{ORS=RS="\0";} {sub($1 "\t", ""); print $0;}' | xargs -0 du -hs

ashawley · 2009-09-11 16:07:39 7
Delete all but the latest 5 files, ignoring directories
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

ls -lt|grep ^-|awk 'NR>5 { print $8 }'|xargs -r rm

karel1980 · 2009-09-16 07:43:03 3

Generate SHA1 hash for each file in a list

List files and pass to openssl to calculate the hash for each file. Show Sample Output

ls [FILENAME] | xargs openssl sha1

m00dimus · 2009-10-03 02:05:43 4

GZip all files in a directory separately
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

ls | xargs -n1 gzip

haplo · 2009-10-15 03:10:38 3
Short Information about loaded kernel modules

Liked command 4077 so I improved it, by doing all text manipulation with sed. "Run this as root, it will be helpful to quickly get information about the loaded kernel modules." THX mohan43u Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ lsmod | sed -e '1d' -e 's/$\([^ ]*$ \)\{1\}.*/\2/' | xargs modinfo | sed -e '/^dep/s/$/\n/g' -e '/^file/b' -e '/^desc/b' -e '/^dep/b' -e d
filename:       /lib/modules/2.6.32-generic/kernel/drivers/net/mii.ko
description:    MII hardware support library
depends:

$
```
1

lsmod | sed -e '1d' -e 's/$\([^ ]*$ \)\{1\}.*/\2/' | xargs modinfo | sed -e '/^dep/s/$/\n/g' -e '/^file/b' -e '/^desc/b' -e '/^dep/b' -e d

marssi · 2009-11-17 22:51:08 4
Find all videos under current directory

Uses mime-type of files rather than relying on file extensions to find files of a certain type. This can obviously be extended to finding files of any other type as well.. like plain text files, audio, etc.. In reference to displaying the total hours of video (which was earlier posted in command line fu, but relied on the user having to supply all possible video file formats) we can now do better: find ./ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file -iNf - | grep video | cut -d: -f1 | xargs -d'\n' /usr/share/doc/mplayer/examples/midentify | grep ID_LENGTH | awk -F "=" '{sum += $2} END {print sum/60/60; print "hours"}'
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find ./ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file -iNf - | grep video | cut -d: -f1

jnash · 2009-11-19 06:05:36 6
find out how much space are occuipied by files smaller than 1024K

The command gives size of all files smaller than 1024k, this information, together with disk usage, can help determin file system parameter (e.g. block size) or storage device (e.g. SSD v.s. HDD). Note if you use awk instead of "cut| dc", you easily breach maximum allowed number of records in awk. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
290545766
```
1

find dir -size -1024k -type f | xargs -d $'\n' -n1 ls -l | cut -d ' ' -f 5 | sed -e '2,$s/$/+/' -e '$ap' | dc

zhangweiwu · 2009-12-28 04:23:01 5
Print the contents of $VARIABLE, six words at a time

Print out the contents of $VARIABLE, six words per line, ignoring any single or double quotes in the text. Useful when $VARIABLE contains a sentence that changes periodically, and may or may not contain quoted text.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

echo $VARIABLE | xargs -d'\40' -n 6 echo

SuperFly · 2010-01-20 15:12:53 4
delete multiple files with spaces in filenames (with confirmation)

ls -Q will show the filenames in quotes. xargs -p rm will print all the filenames piped from ls -Q and ask for confirmation before deleting the files. without the -Q switch, if we have spaces in names, then the files won't be deleted. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
ls -Q *
"new file"  "new file (another copy)"  "new file (copy)"

ls -Q * | xargs -p rm
rm new file new file (another copy) new file (copy) ?...y
```
1

ls -Q * | xargs -p rm

temp_reg · 2010-01-27 02:46:49 9
Simple Gumblar check command
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find filepath -type f -iname "*.html" -o -iname "*.htm" -o -iname "*.php" | xargs grep "Exception\|LGPL\|CODE1"

negima · 2010-01-27 08:43:24 3
Using numsum to sum a column of numbers.

if you, like me, do not have the numsum, this way can do the same. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1653
```
1

echo $(( $( cat count.txt | tr "\n" "+" | xargs -I{} echo {} 0 ) ))

glaudiston · 2010-01-27 10:02:30 4
find large files

simple find -> xargs sort of thing that I get a lot of use out of. Helps find huge files and gives an example of how to use xargs to deal with them. Tested on OSX snow leopard (10.6). Enjoy. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1.1G    ./Downloads/huge_avi.avi
1.2G    ./Downloads/another_huge_avi.avi
```
1

find . -type f -size +1100000k |xargs -I% du -sh %

4fthawaiian · 2010-01-31 22:04:07 8
Search and play MP3 from Skreemr

This use the Screemr search engine to play mp3 songs
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

function skreemplay() { lynx -dump "http://skreemr.com/results.jsp?q=$*" | grep mp3$ | sed 's/^.* //' | xargs mplayer }

thelan · 2010-02-24 08:44:01 3
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Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS

Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)

swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Find all files currently open in Vim and/or gVim

Catches .swp, .swo, .swn, etc. If you have access to lsof, it'll give you more compressed output and show you the associated terminals (e.g., pts/5, which you could then use 'w' to figure out where it's originating from): lsof | grep '\.sw.$' If you have swp files turned off, you can do something like: ps x | grep '[g,v]im', but it won't tell you about files open in buffers, via :e [file].

Get the Volume labels all bitlocker volumes had before being encrypted

Get information of volume labels of bitlocker volumes, even if they are encrypted and locked (no access to filesystem, no password provided). Note that the volume labels can have spaces, but only if you name then before encryption. Renaming a bitlocker partition after being encrypted does not have the same effect as doing it before.

Use curl with a local SOCKS5 proxy (e.g. Tor)

Routes curl input through a local SOCKS5 proxy; in this case, anonymizes curl activity via The Onion Router (Tor) proxy running locally. Note that the traffic will be anonymized, but it will NOT be encrypted, so your traffic will be very vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

Show all programs on UDP and TCP ports with timer information

-p PID and name of the program -u on a UDP port. -t also TCP ports -o networking timer -n numeric IP addresses (don't resolve them) -a all sockets

Install pip with Proxy

Installs pip packages defining a proxy

Copy an element from the previous command

You can specify a range via '-'.

list files recursively by size

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Commands using xargs (769)

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