Commands using xargs sorted by votes

Commands using xargs (769)

sorted by

find and delete files smaller than specific size

Probably neither faster nor better than -delete in find. It's just that I generally dislike teaching find builtin actions.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -type f -size -80k -print0|xargs -0 rm

DeepThought · 2012-09-19 12:15:32 4
Change permissions for all files in the current directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find ./ -type f | xargs sudo chmod 644

unixmonkey39631 · 2012-09-26 00:11:14 10
Change permission for all directories inside the current one
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find site/ -type d | xargs sudo chmod 755

unixmonkey39631 · 2012-09-26 00:12:37 4
Size for all directories inside the current one
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -type d -maxdepth 1 | xargs du -sh

unixmonkey39631 · 2012-09-26 14:58:27 4
Compares two source directories, one original and one post configure and deletes the differences in the source folder

Good for when your working on building a clean source install for RPM packaging or what have you. After testing, run this command to compare the original extracted source to your working source directory and it will remove the differences that are created when running './configure' and 'make'.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

diff ../source-dir.orig/ ../source-dir.post/ | grep "Only in" | sed -e 's/^.*\:.$\<.*\>$/\1/g' | xargs rm -r

bigc00p · 2012-10-17 14:12:32 9
SAR - Get the monthly queue length average using sar -q for both the runq-sz and plist-sz.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

ls /var/log/sa/sa[0-9]*|xargs -I '{}' sar -q -f {}| awk '/Average/'|awk '{runq+=$2;plist+=$3}END{print "average runq-sz:",runq/NR; print "average plist-sz: "plist/NR}'

omatictost · 2012-10-25 17:04:48 7
find . -name "*" -print | xargs grep -s pattern
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -name "*" -print | xargs grep -s pattern

RedFox · 2012-11-28 13:09:35 4
find . $ -name \*.cgi -o -name \*.txt -o -name \*.htm -o -name \*.html -o -name \*.shtml $ -print | xargs grep -s pattern
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . $ -name \*.cgi -o -name \*.txt -o -name \*.htm -o -name \*.html -o -name \*.shtml $ -print | xargs grep -s pattern

RedFox · 2012-11-28 17:01:37 4
Matching Strings
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

grep -l <string-to-match> * | xargs grep -c <string-not-to-match> | grep '\:0'

RedFox · 2012-11-28 17:03:46 8
Find and replace text within all files within a directory

find . = will set up your recursive search. You can narrow your search to certain file by adding -name "*.ext" or limit buy using the same but add prune like -name "*.ext" -prune xargs =sets it up like a command line for each file find finds and will invoke the next command which is perl. perl = invoke perl -p sets up a while loop -i in place and the .bak will create a backup file like filename.ext.bak -e execute the following.... 's/ / /;' your basic substitute and replace.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . | xargs perl -p -i.bak -e 's/oldString/newString/;'

RedFox · 2012-11-28 17:11:18 4
Purge frozen messages in Exim

do 1000 at a time so that if your doodoo is deep you can avoid avoid "command-line too big" error
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

exipick -zi | xargs --max-args=1000 exim -Mrm

jasen · 2012-12-12 20:46:22 5
Delete all apps in a heroku org
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

heroku manager:apps --org org-name | xargs -I {} heroku apps:delete {} --confirm {}

ericfode · 2012-12-20 07:42:24 7
List all text files (exclude binary files)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find -type f | xargs file | grep ".*: .* text" | sed "s;$.*$: .* text.*;\1;"

phunehehe · 2012-12-24 07:53:52 5
Find Duplicate Files (based on size first, then MD5 hash)

This is a modified version of the OP, wrapped into a bash function. This version handles newlines and other whitespace correctly, the original has problems with the thankfully rare case of newlines in the file names. It also allows checking an arbitrary number of directories against each other, which is nice when the directories that you think might have duplicates don't have a convenient common ancestor directory.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find-duplicates () { find "$@" -not -empty -type f -printf "%s\0" | sort -rnz | uniq -dz | xargs -0 -I{} -n1 find "$@" -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 --all-repeated=separate; }

mpeschke · 2013-01-23 23:20:26 5
How to find all open files by a process in Solaris 10

Executing pfiles will return a list of all descriptors utilized by the process We are interested in the S_IFREG entries since they are pointing usually to files In the line, there is the inode number of the file which we use in order to find the filename. The only bad thing is that in order not to search from / you have to suspect where could possibly be the file. Improvements more than welcome. lsof was not available in my case Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
user@machine# for i in `pfiles 25925|grep S_IFREG|awk '{print $5}'|awk -F":" '{print $2}'`; do find /path/tmp -inum $i |xargs ls -lah; done
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 910 Jan 26  2012 /path/tmp/file1.prm
-rw-rw-rw- 1 user group 6.3K Jan 20 06:30 /path/tmp/file2.rpt
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 86K Jan 23 23:34 /path/tmp/file3.log
-rwxrw-r-- 1 user group 65 Dec 26 07:27 /path/tmp/file4.pcr
```
0

for i in `pfiles pid|grep S_IFREG|awk '{print $5}'|awk -F":" '{print $2}'`; do find / -inum $i |xargs ls -lah; done

giorger · 2013-01-24 13:57:19 4
Find corrupted jpeg image files

This checks jpeg data and metadata, should be grepped as needed, maybe a -B1 Warning for the first, and a -E "WARNING|ERROR" for the second part....
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find . -iname '*jpg' -print0 | xargs -0 exiftool -warning; find . -iname '*jpg' -print0 | xargs -0 jpeginfo -c

unixmonkey46191 · 2013-01-28 16:44:19 4

Find stock debian package config files that have been modified since installation

This functionality seems to be missing from commands like dpkg. Ideally, I want to duplicate the behavior of rpm --verify, but it seems difficult to do this in one relatively short command pipeline. Show Sample Output

dpkg-query -Wf '${Package}\n' | xargs dpkg --status | sed '/^Conffiles:/,/^Description:/!d;//d' | awk '{print $2 " " $1}' | md5sum -c 2>/dev/null | grep FAILED$ | cut -f1 -d':'

hallmarc · 2013-01-31 16:52:38 10

Copy modified files between two Git commits

Show Sample Output

git diff --name-only --diff-filter=AMXTCR HEAD~2 HEAD | xargs -l -I{} cp --parents --verbose "{}" target_dir

batandwa · 2013-02-11 08:12:40 4

copy zip files which contains XXX
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

for i in *RET.zip; do unzip -l "$i"| grep -B 4 XXX | grep RET| sed "s/.\+EPS/EPS/" |xargs -I '{}' cp '{}' out/'{}';done;

tsonkomirchev · 2013-02-13 17:24:37 5
Purge completely packages on debian / ubuntu

completely remove those packages that leave files in debian / ubuntu marked with rc and not removed completely with traditional tools
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

dpkg -l | grep ^rc | awk '{ print $2}' | xargs apt-get -y remove --purge

Richzendy · 2013-02-15 01:34:37 7
Kill a lot of process once a time
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

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

szimbaro · 2013-02-27 12:33:30 4
Instant threadpool
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

cat item_list | xargs -n1 -P<n> process_item

sanchan89 · 2013-03-06 20:25:17 31
find str in in a directory which file extension is .php
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

find ./ -type f -name "*.php" | xargs grep -n "name" -r {}

motopig · 2013-03-08 11:03:49 4
Ensure path permissions from '.' prior to root

`pwd` returns the current path `grep -o` prints each slash on new line perl generates the paths sequence: './.', './../.', ... `readlink` canonicalizes paths (it makes the things more transparent) `xargs -tn1` applies chmod for each of them. Each command applied is getting printed to STDERR. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
chmod 755 /tmp/1/2/3 
chmod 755 /tmp/1/2 
chmod 755 /tmp/1 
chmod 755 /tmp 
```
0

pwd|grep -o '/'|perl -ne '$x.="./.";print`readlink -f $x`'|xargs -tn1 chmod 755

luke_skywalker · 2013-03-14 12:03:44 7
Recursively search your directory tree files for a string
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

alias gfind='find . -print0 | xargs -0 egrep -I '

pdunham · 2013-03-16 03:20:49 4
‹ First < 17 18 19 20 21 > Last ›

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands

Check These Out

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.

exit if another instance is running

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

Send an email from the terminal when job finishes

Might as well include the status code it exited with so you know right away if it failed or not.

Get length of current playlist in xmms2

Set the hardware date and time based on the system date

SMS reminder

Send an e-mail to SMS reminder in 15 minutes from now, to call my wife. See list of carriers bellow Carrier Email to SMS Gateway Alltel [10-digit phone number]@message.alltel.com AT&T (formerly Cingular) [10-digit phone number]@txt.att.net [10-digit phone number]@mms.att.net (MMS) [10-digit phone number]@cingularme.com Boost Mobile [10-digit phone number]@myboostmobile.com Nextel (now Sprint Nextel) [10-digit telephone number]@messaging.nextel.com Sprint PCS (now Sprint Nextel) [10-digit phone number]@messaging.sprintpcs.com [10-digit phone number]@pm.sprint.com (MMS) T-Mobile [10-digit phone number]@tmomail.net US Cellular [10-digit phone number]email.uscc.net (SMS) [10-digit phone number]@mms.uscc.net (MMS) Verizon [10-digit phone number]@vtext.com [10-digit phone number]@vzwpix.com (MMS) Virgin Mobile USA [10-digit phone number]@vmobl.com

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)
» commands using xargs

Commands using xargs (769) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

Commands using xargs (769)

sorted by