So:
Is $PARALLEL set?
Are these empty:
~/.parallel/config
~/.parallelrc
/etc/parallel/config
I have the feeling one of those contain something that results in the
extra '2'. Maybe something like:
% setenv PARALLEL "--jobs 3 2"
% parallel echo ::: A
2: Command not found.
What is the output of:
% parallel --plain echo ::: A
--plain ignores $PARALLEL and config files.
You found it, I had $PARALLEL set in my environment. It must have been from something a long time ago; I have forgotten what would have wanted that variable set. This was obviously user error and thank you for helping me through it. On the plus side, this was a good excuse to clean out many years of cruft in my .cshrc.
-Henry