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18_xargs.md

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xargs

xargs is a command to read from stdin, which is a stream of data, and convert each line into arguments that are passed to another command.

Our hello_world.sh ex. 3 took in two command line arguments like this:

BabyMac:~ jennapederson$ ./hello_world.sh Jenna Pederson

But what if we only have a file of data? Using file redirection won't work because we are expecting command line arguments not stdin from a file.

BabyMac:~ jennapederson$ ./hello_world.sh < names.txt
Hello World,  !

Instead we can use xargs to convert from stdin to arguments ex. 8.

BabyMac:~ jennapederson$ cat names.txt | xargs ./hello_world.sh
Hello World, Jenna Pederson!

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