Basic usage
echo "file1 file2 file3" | xargs ls -l
Delete files from list
cat files_to_delete.txt | xargs rm
One argument per command
echo "1 2 3" | xargs -n1 echo "Number:"
Execute command for each line
cat urls.txt | xargs -I {} curl -O {}
Parallel execution
Run 4 commands in parallel:
cat urls.txt | xargs -P 4 -I {} curl -O {}
Find and delete
find . -name "*.tmp" | xargs rm
Safer find and delete (handle spaces)
find . -name "*.tmp" -print0 | xargs -0 rm
Create backup of files
ls *.txt | xargs -I {} cp {} {}.bak
Download multiple files
cat urls.txt | xargs -n 1 -P 5 wget
Convert images
ls *.jpg | xargs -I {} convert {} -resize 50% resized/{}
Grep in multiple files
find . -name "*.log" | xargs grep "ERROR"
Count lines in files
find . -name "*.js" -print0 | xargs -0 wc -l
Compress files
ls *.txt | xargs -I {} gzip {}
Ask for confirmation
find . -name "*.tmp" | xargs -p rm
Specify delimiter
echo "file1,file2,file3" | xargs -d',' ls -l
Create directories
cat folders.txt | xargs mkdir -p
Change permissions
find . -name "*.sh" -print0 | xargs -0 chmod +x
Docker cleanup
docker ps -a -q | xargs docker rm
Git operations
git branch -r | grep -v '\->' | xargs -I {} git branch --track {} origin/{}
Process multiple arguments
echo "dir1 dir2 dir3" | xargs -n1 -I {} sh -c 'cd {} && npm install'
Combine with grep
grep -rl "TODO" . | xargs sed -i 's/TODO/DONE/g'
Show commands before executing
ls *.txt | xargs -t rm
Maximum line length
find . -type f | xargs -s 1000 ls -l