How to sleep for 1 second between each xargs command?

Question

For example, if I execute

ps aux | awk '{print $1}' | xargs -I {} echo {}

I want to let the shell sleep for 1 second between each echo.

How can I change my shell command?

Answer 1

You can use the following syntax:

ps aux | awk '{print $1}' | xargs -I % sh -c '{ echo %; sleep 1; }'

Be careful with spaces and semicolons though. After every command in between brackets, semicolon is required (even after the last one).