[bug #26327] xargs man page is vague about the number of times command is executed

[Filipus Klutiero]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?26327>

                 Summary: xargs man page is vague about the number of times
command is executed
                 Project: findutils
            Submitted by: chealer
            Submitted on: ven 24 avr 2009 05:14:46 GMT
                Category: documentation
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: None
           Fixed Release: None

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Details:

The xargs manual page contains

This manual page documents the GNU version of xargs. xargs reads items from
the standard input, delimited by blanks (which can be protected with double or
single quotes or a backslash) or newlines, and executes the command (default
is /bin/echo) one or more times with any initial-arguments followed by items
read from standard input.

This is a rather strange or vague introduction. One wonders how many times
command is executed. It could be mentioned that without options, xargs does
not necessarily pass the same number of arguments each time, and that xargs
tends to read many arguments before executing a new command. It could also
clarify to explain why xargs may not pass all arguments to a single command
without options.
It could help to give an example of what xargs does. For example:

echo a b | xargs cat
could be equivalent to
cat a; cat b
or
cat a b




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