Commands using xargs sorted by votes

Commands using xargs (769)

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Recursive file content search
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

find . -name *.php | xargs grep -i -n 'TERM'

crashrox · 2009-03-23 14:27:55 31
remove exact phrase from multiple files

Linux : these script enable you to edit multiple files and remove exact phrase from multiple files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

grep -r "mystring" . |uniq | cut -d: -f1 | xargs sed -i "s/mystring//"

mohamednasr2000 · 2009-04-09 12:49:01 9
remove unneeded configuration files in debian

This will, for an application that has already been removed but had its configuration left behind, purge that configuration from the system. To test it out first, you can remove the last -y, and it will show you what it will purge without actually doing it. I mean it never hurts to check first, "just in case." ;)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

dpkg-query -l| grep -v "ii " | grep "rc " | awk '{print $2" "}' | tr -d "\n" | xargs aptitude purge -y

thepicard · 2009-04-28 19:25:53 11
Kill multiple instances of a running process

Find and kill multiple instances of a process with one simple command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

pgrep rouge-process | xargs sudo kill -9

mheadd · 2010-05-09 22:30:05 6
Kill process by searching something from 'ps' command
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

ps ux|grep <process name>|awk '{print $2}'|xargs -n 1 kill

metalx1000 · 2010-06-18 20:12:37 3
How many lines in your c project?

it recursively searches your project's directories and sum the lines of every source [.c or .h]. Then it gives you the total.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

find -name *.\[c\|h\] | xargs wc -l

pescio · 2011-05-02 21:18:35 11
Search recursively to find a word or phrase in certain file types, such as C code

Original submitter's command spawns a "grep" process for every file found. Mine spawns one grep with a long list of all matching files to search in. Learn xargs, everyone! It's a very powerful and always available tool.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

find . -name "*.[ch]" -print | xargs grep -i -H "search phrase"

jblaine · 2011-06-05 23:27:30 3
kills all php5-fcgi processes for user per name
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

pgrep -u username php5-fcgi | xargs kill -9

drucko · 2011-08-09 15:32:14 2
find the 10 largest directories

http://superuser.com/questions/9847/linux-utility-for-finding-the-largest-files-directories
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 du -s | sort -n | tail -10 | cut -f2 | xargs -I{} du -sh {} | sort -rn

noah · 2013-06-26 02:08:21 7
rm filenames with spaces

When you do a ls -1 | xargs rm it wouldn't workd because those files have spaces. So you must use find -print0 and xargs -0
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

find /Users/jpn/.ievms/ -type f -print0| xargs -0 du -sh

unixmonkey39631 · 2013-10-16 09:54:19 8
Write a shell script that removes files that contain a string

After this command you can review doit.sh file before executing it. If it looks good, execute: `. doit.sh`
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

find . | xargs grep -l "FOOBAR" | awk '{print "rm -f "$1}' > doit.sh

sergeylukin · 2014-04-06 15:48:41 8
Execute AccuRev pop command to retrieve missing files from a workspace.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

accurev stat -M -fl | awk '{print "\"" $0 "\""}' | xargs accurev pop

adamm9 · 2009-02-09 19:22:39 8
Search all files of type *.php for string 'specialFunction' and output the result in searchResult.txt

Will search recursively and output the searchResult.txt in the same folder you are located.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

find . -name "*.php" | xargs egrep -i -s 'specialFunction' > searchresult.txt

tb323 · 2009-02-23 15:25:49 12
Kill a process with its name

Well this can come handy , when you don't feel like playing with pid rather if you know the process name say "firefox",it would kill it.The script given below would kill the process with its name given as first parameter , though not robust enough to notify that process doesn't exist , well if you know what you are doing that's wouldn't be a problem.:) ---- killhim.sh ---- #!/bin/bash ps -u $USER |grep $1 | awk '{ print $1}'| xargs kill ----
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

ps -u $USER |grep $1 | awk '{ print $1}'| xargs kill

buffer · 2009-07-20 10:06:32 11
List the size (in human readable form) of all sub folders from the current location
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

ls | xargs du -sh

jyro · 2009-12-10 15:58:05 3
/bin/rm: Argument list too long.

root@wow/var/spool/clientmqueue # rm spam-* /bin/rm: Argument list too long.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

find . -name 'spam-*' |xargs rm;find . -name 'spam-*' -print0 | xargs -0 rm

mancipar · 2011-01-22 06:46:21 3
grep 'hoge' **/* => Argument list too long

if Argument list too long
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

echo **/* | xargs grep 'hoge'

yukirin · 2011-04-12 13:18:41 3
use ImageMagik to convert tint (hue rotation) of an icon set directory.

see http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/color_mods/#modulate
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

/bin/ls *.png | xargs -l1 -I {} convert {} -modulate 100,100,70 ../../icons/32x32/{}

hute37 · 2011-06-13 14:35:10 4
kill all pids from $PID

# define user pid to kill PID=httpd ; # kill all pids ps aux | grep $PID | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
none
```
-4

PID=httpd ; ps aux | grep $PID | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9

esaenz · 2012-02-21 23:27:47 6
Kill all Zombie processes one-liner

Did some research and found the previous command wrong, we don't kill a zombie but its parent. Just made some modifcation to khashmeshab's command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

ps -xaw -o state,ppid | grep Z | grep -v PID | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9

terrywang · 2013-01-09 04:21:54 5
Poll and print end of lates modified file

Watches for file modifications in the current directory and tails the file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

watch 'ls -tr1 | tail -n1 | xargs tail'

batandwa · 2013-05-09 11:37:59 10
Arguments too long

xargs will automatically determine how namy args are too many and only pass a reasonable number of them at a time. In the example, 500,002 file names were split across 26 instantiations of the command "echo". Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ ls | xargs echo | wc 
     26  500002 3388906
```
-4

ls | xargs WHATEVER_COMMAND

pdxdoughnut · 2014-03-12 18:00:21 7
Find out how much ram memory has your video (graphic) card

One liner is based on this article: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001307.htm Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ lspci|grep -i "VGA Compatible Controller"|cut -d' ' -f1|xargs lspci -v -s|grep ' prefetchable'
        Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
```
-4

lspci|grep -i "VGA Compatible Controller"|cut -d' ' -f1|xargs lspci -v -s|grep ' prefetchable'

knoppix5 · 2020-09-11 14:04:10 273
kills all processes for a certain program e.g. httpd
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

ps aux | grep 'httpd ' | awk {'print $2'} | xargs kill -9

thisduck · 2009-03-23 16:15:06 17
Delete all files in current directory that have been modified less than 5 days ago.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

find ./ -mtime -5 | xargs rm -f

skye · 2009-03-23 21:00:45 13
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Display which distro is installed

Works on nearly all linux distros

Find the process you are looking for minus the grepped one

As an alternative to using an additional grep -v grep you can use a simple regular expression in the search pattern (first letter is something out of the single letter list ;-)) to drop the grep command itself.

Show a curses based menu selector

Not so much handy by itself, but very nice in shell scripts. This makes you a handy ncurses based checklist. Much like terminal installers, just use the arrow keys and hit 'Space' to adjust the selections. Returns all selected tags as strings, with no newline at the end. So, your output will be something like: "one" "two" "three" "four" "etc" For those who prefer bash expansion over gratuitious typing: $ whiptail --checklist "Simple checkbox menu" 12 35 3 $(echo {one,two,three,four}" '' 0"} ) Things to note: The height must includes the outer border and padding: add 7 to however many items you want to show up at the same time. If the status is 1, it will be selected by default. anything else, will be deselected.

Easily scp a file back to the host you're connecting from

Place in .bashrc and invoke like this: "mecp /path/to/file", and it will copy the specified file(s) back to the desktop of the host you're ssh'ing in from. To easily upload a file from the host you're ssh'ing in from use this: ucp (){ scp ${SSH_CLIENT%% *}:Desktop/upload/* .; }

Rips CDs (Playstation, etc.) and names the files the same as the volume name

Adding Prefix to File name

Good old bracket expansion :-) For large numbers of files, "rename" will spare you the for-loop, or the find/exec...

FizzBuzz in one line of Bash

The (in)famous "FizzBuzz" programming challenge, answered in a single line of Bash code. The "|column" part at the end merely formats the output a bit, so if "column" is not installed on your machine you can simply omit that part. Without "|column", the solution only uses 75 characters. The version below is expanded to multiple lines, with comments added. for i in {1..100} # Use i to loop from "1" to "100", inclusive. do ((i % 3)) && # If i is not divisible by 3... x= || # ...blank out x (yes, "x= " does that). Otherwise,... x=Fizz # ...set x to the string "Fizz". ((i % 5)) || # If i is not divisible by 5, skip (there's no "&&")... x+=Buzz # ...Otherwise, append (not set) the string "Buzz" to x. echo ${x:-$i} # Print x unless it is blanked out. Otherwise, print i. done | column # Wrap output into columns (not part of the test).

check open ports without netstat or lsof

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" }

Numeric zero padding file rename

rename file name with fixed length nomeric format pattern

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Commands using xargs (769)

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