Commands using xargs sorted by votes

Commands using xargs (769)

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Convert one's Java source file encoding

One of my friends committed his code in the encoding of GB2312, which broke the build job. I have to find his code and convert.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find . -name "*.java" -type f -perm +600 -print | xargs -I _ sh -c 'grep -q hexianmao _ && iconv -f gb2312 -t utf8 -o _ -c _ '

Sunng · 2011-03-08 13:02:25 7
Clean-up release directories keeping the only the latest two

Deletes capistrano-style release directories (except that there are dashes between the YYYY-MM-DD) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
user@server:~/apps/appname/releases$ ls
2010-12-02-121502  2010-12-01-215457
```
-1

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | grep -Pv "^.$" | sort -rn --field-separator="-" | sed -n '3,$p' | xargs rm -rf

wilmoore · 2011-03-08 17:38:26 6
this svn script will commit all files excluding those with extensions {.project .classpath .properties .sh .number} and those with Status Modified or Added {M or A}
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

svn st | grep -e [MA] | egrep -ve '.project|.classpath|.properties|.sh|.number' | awk -F' ' '{ print $2}' | xargs svn ci -m "message"

drunkcoder · 2011-03-10 15:32:36 6
easily strace all your apache processes
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ps -C apache o pid= | sed 's/^/-p /' | xargs strace

depesz · 2011-03-15 08:46:33 3
bulk rename files with sed, one-liner
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ls | sed 'p;s/foo/bar/' | xargs -n2 mv

pkufranky · 2011-04-30 10:56:35 3
urldecoding

urldecode files in current directrory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ls * | while read fin;do fout=$(echo -n $fin | sed -e's/%$[0-9A-F][0-9A-F]$/\\\\\x\1/g' | xargs echo -e);if [ "$fout" != "$fin" ];then echo "mv '$fin' '$fout'";fi;done | bash -x

pawelb1973 · 2011-05-18 07:24:54 82
Undo Mercurial add before commit

Undo accidental file add to mercurial. This command undo file adds to all recent adds
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

hg st --added -n |xargs hg revert

yrcjaya · 2011-06-01 19:54:41 3
Purge application's residual config & orphans
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

dpkg -l | sed '/^rc/!d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* $[^ ]*$.*/\1/' | xargs -r sudo apt-get -y purge

plasticdoc · 2011-06-05 09:19:27 3

Clone all remote branches of a specific GitHub repository

-1

git branch -a | grep "remotes/origin" | grep -v master | awk -F / '{print $3}' | xargs -I % git clone -b % git://github.com/jamesotron/DevWorld-2010-Cocoa-Workshop %

evandrix · 2011-06-29 00:13:47 3

Count the lines of source code in directory, ignoring files in generated by svn

There's nothing particularly novel about this combination of find, grep, and wc, I'm just putting it here in case I want it again. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
123 ./src/java/com/company/app/service/Foo.java
 42 ./test/java/com/company/app/service/FooTests.java
165 total
```
-1

find . -name '*.java' -o -name '*.xml' | grep -v '\.svn' | xargs wc -l

ewilson · 2011-06-30 12:45:40 5
do a full file listing of every file found with locate

Escapes spaces in paths.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

locate -i yourfilename | sed 's/ /\\ /g' | xargs ls -lah | less

unixmonkey23919 · 2011-07-26 13:00:39 4
Generate an XKCD #936 style 4 word password

Doesn't use shuf, its much faster with "shuf -n4" instead of sort -R Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
trample tylenol parawing bycatch 
```
-1

sort -R /usr/share/dict/british | grep -v -m4 ^\{1,10\}$ | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] | tr "\n" " " | tr -d "'s" | xargs -0 echo

takac · 2011-08-16 10:11:21 4
find&grep all in once

calls grep on all non-binary files returned by find on its current working directory Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
./Main.java://	public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
```
-1

#!/bin/bash find | grep -P -v "(class)|(zip)|(png)|(gz)|(gif)|(jpeg)|(jpg)" | xargs -I @ grep -H $1 @

kirdie · 2011-10-14 13:28:49 4
sets desktop background using zenity

Assuming you have zenity installed, and assuming that you keep your backgrounds in ~/backgrounds, then this should work for you! :)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

zenity --list --width 500 --height 500 --column 'Wallpapers' $(ls) | xargs xsetbg -center -smooth -fullscreen

TheShadowFog · 2011-11-15 02:44:48 4
full text(CJK) search mails and link the result to $MAILDIR/bingo/cur/
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

recoll -t -q "keyword" | grep message/rfc822 | sed -s 's,^.*$'$MAILDIR'[^]]*$\].*$,\"\1\",' | xargs ln -sft $MAILDIR/bingo/cur/

s5unty · 2011-12-09 17:22:51 3
recursively detecting files with a BOM
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0r awk '/^\xEF\xBB\xBF/ {print FILENAME} {nextfile}'

unixmonkey24812 · 2012-01-11 03:15:12 4
copy all Photos from Canon A520 to one place

You must spezify /where folder and / folder If you have another camera you must experiment with Exif data (after -g and after grep) and mask of your photo files IMG_????.JPG I have do it on Knoppix 6.7.0 You must have installed exiv2. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
a lot of errors, it is pictures from another Cameras, which can't be grepped...
```
-1

find / -type f -name IMG_????.JPG -print0 |xargs -0 exiv2 -g Exif.Canon.ModelID '{}' |grep A520 |rev |cut --complement -d " " -f1-40 |rev |xargs -I {} cp --parents {} /where

fladam · 2012-03-10 03:01:01 3
SAR - List top CPU usage spikes over the last month using sar.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ls /var/log/sa/sa[0-9]*|xargs -I '{}' sar -u -f {}|awk '/^[0-9]/&&!/^12:00:01|RESTART|CPU/{print "%user: "$4" %system: "$6" %iowait: "$7" %nice: "$5" %idle: "$9}'|sort -nk10|head

omatictost · 2012-10-25 18:27:47 5
Multiple open files and go directly to the line where some string is

Open all files which have some string go directly to the first line where that string is and run command on it. Other examples: Run vim only once with multiple files (and just go to string in the first one): grep -rl string_to_find public_html/css/ | xargs vim +/string_to_find Run vim for each file, go to string in every one and run command (to delete line): grep -rl string_to_find public_html/css/ | xargs -I '{}' vim +/string_to_find {} -c ":delete"
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

grep -rl string_to_find public_html/css/ | xargs -I '{}' vim +/string_to_find {} -c ":s/string_to_find/string_replaced"

algol · 2012-11-07 14:44:51 5
rename multiple files with different name, eg converting all txt to csv
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

touch file{1..10}.txt ; ls *txt| sed -e "p;s/\.txt$/\.csv/"|xargs -n2 mv

nomankhn · 2013-02-08 15:09:20 4
Find files and list them sorted by modification time
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find -type f | xargs ls -1tr

unixmonkey50727 · 2013-03-20 16:43:54 4
Recursively change permissions on files, leave directories alone.

xargs is a more elegant approach to executing a command on find results then -exec as -exec is meant as a filtering flag.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find /var/www/ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

FiloSottile · 2013-03-28 11:10:30 6
purge half of files in backup directory

If you have a directory with lot of backups (full backups I mean), when it gets to some size, you could want to empty some space. With this command you'll remove half of the files. The command assumes that your backup files starts with YYYYMMDD or that they go some alphabetical order. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
(nothing, it will remove half of the files)
```
-1

find . | sort | awk 'NR%2==0' | xargs rm $1

sucotronic · 2013-07-11 07:36:18 10
list each file/directory size in a directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ls | xargs -I{} du -sh {}

kenshin54 · 2013-07-28 04:18:25 8
Uninstall all gems

This command removes all ruby gems except the default ones that can not be removed. It is based on http://geekystuff.net/2009/01/14/remove-all-ruby-gems/
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

gem list | cut -d" " -f1 | grep --invert-match "test-unit\|psych\|io-console\|rdoc\|json\|bigdecimal\|rake\|minitest" | xargs gem uninstall -aIx

gdelfino · 2014-01-10 10:58:59 9
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Advanced python tracing

Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

floating point operations in shell scripts

allows you to use floating point operations in shell scripts

Given process ID print its environment variables

Same as previous but without fugly sed =x

Find the 10 users that take up the most disk space

In OSX you would have to make sure that you "sudo -s" your way to happiness since it will give a few "Permission denied" errors before finally spitting out the results. In OSX the directory structure has to start with the "Users" Directory then it will recursively perform the operation. Your Lord and master, Mematron

Double your disk read performance in a single command

(WARN) This will absolutely not work on all systems, unless you're running large, high speed, hardware RAID arrays. For example, systems using Dell PERC 5/i SAS/SATA arrays. If you have a hardware RAID array, try it. It certainly wont hurt. You may be can test the speed disk with some large file in your system, before and after using this: $ time dd if=/tmp/disk.iso of=/dev/null bs=256k To know the value of block device parameter known as readahead. $ blockdev --getra /dev/sdb And set the a value 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, and maybe 16384... it really depends on the number of hard disks, their speed, your RAID controller, etc. (see sample)

Make changes in .bashrc immediately available

You may want to just use the shortcut "." instead of "source"

FAST Search and Replace for Strings in all Files in Directory

I needed a way to search all files in a web directory that contained a certain string, and replace that string with another string. In the example, I am searching for "askapache" and replacing that string with "htaccess". I wanted this to happen as a cron job, and it was important that this happened as fast as possible while at the same time not hogging the CPU since the machine is a server. So this script uses the nice command to run the sh shell with the command, which makes the whole thing run with priority 19, meaning it won't hog CPU processing. And the -P5 option to the xargs command means it will run 5 separate grep and sed processes simultaneously, so this is much much faster than running a single grep or sed. You may want to do -P0 which is unlimited if you aren't worried about too many processes or if you don't have to deal with process killers in the bg. Also, the -m1 command to grep means stop grepping this file for matches after the first match, which also saves time.

List your MACs address

Display a wave pattern

Purely frivolous - print a sine/cosine curve to the console - the width varies as it progresses. Ctrl-C to halt.

list files recursively by size

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Commands using xargs (769)

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