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[bug #52137] unexpected behaviour when combining -I and -n
From: |
Andreas Metzler |
Subject: |
[bug #52137] unexpected behaviour when combining -I and -n |
Date: |
Sun, 1 Oct 2017 12:42:08 -0400 (EDT) |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/55.0 |
Follow-up Comment #3, bug #52137 (project findutils):
Hello,
agreed regarding addition of warning and doc-update.
> "But I cannot see posix requiring that -I and -n must produce
> strange results, so xargs could go beyond posix and produce
> correct results in that case anyway."
Actually POSIX saying that -I and -n are mutually exclusive is not arbitrary.
The specification of -I and -n cannot be fullfilled at same time, except for
the degenerate case (one line with a single argument):
-I [...] utility is executed for each logical line from standard input.
Arguments in the standard input shall be separated only by unescaped [newline]
characters, not by [blank] characters.
-n [...] Invoke utility using as many standard input arguments as possible, up
to number arguments maximum.
Therefore because POSIX requires this behavior ...
address@hidden:/tmp$ echo a b | xargs -n1 echo x
x a
x b
address@hidden:/tmp$ echo a b | xargs -I {} echo x {}
x a b
... mixing -L and -n *must* produce strange results (or an error).
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- [bug #52137] unexpected behaviour when combining -I and -n,
Andreas Metzler <=