Commands using xargs sorted by votes

Commands using xargs (769)

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Kill a bunch of processes with the same name
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

ps ax | grep <processname> | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}' | sudo xargs kill -9

copyhacker · 2009-03-24 19:52:47 11
Recursively grep thorugh directory for string in file.

Recursive grep through directory for file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

find directory/ |xargs grep -i "phrase"

tuxtutorials · 2010-01-26 14:56:56 3
search for and kill a process in one blow
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

ps aux|grep -i [p]rocessname|awk '{ print $2 }'|xargs kill

billcarroll · 2010-04-10 18:42:27 17
remove all CVS directories
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

find . -type d -name 'CVS' | xargs rm -r

kev · 2011-08-10 07:38:51 3
egrep -r replacement for UNIX systems

Finds a string in files recursively below the current directory on systems without the "egrep" and its "-r" functionality. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
./script-45/parser.db
```
-5

find . -type f | xargs grep -l "string"

Neo23x0 · 2011-08-30 13:22:42 6
Kill any process with one command using program name

Removed unneeded grep -v by making the initial grep unable to match itself.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-6

ps -ef | grep [j]boss | awk '{print $2}'|xargs kill -9

utoxin · 2010-09-30 15:55:41 3
This is a nice way to kill processes.. the example below is for firefox!!! substitute firefox for whatever the process name is...

This is a nice way to kill processes.. the example here is for firefox!!! substitute firefox for whatever the process name is... Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
kill -9 7491 
kill -9 7506 
kill -9 7434 
kill -9 7532
```
-7

ps aux | grep -i firefox | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs -t -i kill -9 {}

blackdude · 2009-02-19 18:50:00 11
kill all instances of an annoying or endless, thread-spawning process
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-7

ps auxwww | grep outofcontrolprocess | awk '{print $9}' | xargs kill -9

fpater · 2009-02-20 21:49:38 6
Kill all processes matching a given name

This command kills all processes with 'SomeCommand' in the process name. There are other more elegant ways to extract the process names from ps but they are hard to remember and not portable across platforms. Use this command with caution as you could accidentally kill other matching processes! xargs is particularly handy in this case because it makes it easy to feed the process IDs to kill and it also ensures that you don't try to feed too many PIDs to kill at once and overflow the command-line buffer. Note that if you are attempting to kill many thousands of runaway processes at once you should use 'kill -9'. Otherwise the system will try to bring each process into memory before killing it and you could run out of memory. Typically when you want to kill many processes at once it is because you are already in a low memory situation so if you don't 'kill -9' you will make things worse
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-7

ps axww | grep SomeCommand | awk '{ print $1 }' | xargs kill

philiph · 2009-02-28 17:48:51 11
Recursive chmod all files and directories within the current directory

This will handle the case that the filename has spaces or other characters that need to be escaped.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-7

find . -name "*" -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} chmod 777 {}

aardvark4 · 2010-10-11 19:05:41 3
List all file and directory on user's home with details
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

ls /home/user | xargs ls -lhR | less

servermanaged · 2009-03-13 10:38:46 16
Altera texto dentro dos arquivos retornados pelo comando 'find' (find and replacing strings on all files in directory)

Esse comando procura por arquivos php que que iniciem com ' Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$
```
-8

find ./wp-content/themes/rotce2009/ -name '*.php' -type f | xargs sed -i 's/<? /<?php /g'

anestesya · 2009-12-16 19:01:12 4
Recursively remove .svn directories
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

ls -RAx | grep "svn:$" | sed -e "s/svn:/svn/" | xargs rm -fr

ook · 2010-02-23 08:42:15 3
Remove all zero size files from current directory (not recursive)

Remove all zero size files from current directory. Its a not recursive option like: find . -size 0c -exec rm {} \;
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

ls -s|grep -E "^ *0"|sed "s/^ *0 //g"|xargs -i rm "{}"

glaudiston · 2012-04-18 14:50:46 6
Copy all images to external hard-drive
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-8

ls *.jpg | xargs -n1 -i cp {} /external-hard-drive/directory

techie · 2013-05-09 08:33:01 10
Find broken symlinks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-9

find . -type l | xargs file | grep broken

kineticrick · 2011-04-07 22:58:02 4
Recursive chmod all files and directories within the current directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-11

find | xargs chmod 777

tsiqueira · 2009-12-23 10:21:58 4
Delete all files and folders except one file/dir

This command will delete all files and folders except 'skipme'. it could be a file or a folder.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-11

ls -R | grep -v skipme | xargs rm -Rf

hadifarnoud · 2013-10-18 08:11:39 13
Grep only files matching certain pattern (Advanced)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-11

find <path> |xargs grep <pattern>

bakhru · 2015-05-30 19:29:25 9
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Ultimate current directory usage command

An NCurses version of the famous old 'du' unix command

re-assign line numbers

Get free RAM in %

start a tunnel from some machine's port 80 to your local post 2001

now you can acces the website by going to http://localhost:2001/

List out classes in of all htmls in directory

Lists out all classes used in all *.html files in the currect directory. usefull for checking if you have left out any style definitions, or accidentally given a different name than you intended. ( I have an ugly habit of accidentally substituting camelCase instead of using under_scores: i would name soemthing counterBox instead of counter_box) WARNING: assumes you give classnames in between double quotes, and that you apply only one class per element.

Generate Random Text based on Length

add all files not under version control to repository

With the force options the same results can be achieved

Synchronize both your system clock and hardware clock and calculate/adjust time drift

Do not run this command if you already have ntpd running! This needs to run as root, for example with sudo: $ sudo ntpdate pool.ntp.org && sudo hwclock --systohc && sudo hwclock --adjust This command will fetch accurate time from NTP servers and synchronize your system clock, then it will use the system clock to synchronize your hardware clock, and will calculate the time drift.

List the size (in human readable form) of all sub folders from the current location

Sorted in human readable format.

Print stack trace of a core file without needing to enter gdb interactively

This does almost the same thing as the original, but it runs the full backtrace for _all_ the threads, which is pretty important when reporting a crash for a multithreaded software, since more often than not, the signal handler is executed in a different thread than the crash happened.

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Commands using xargs (769)

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