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linuxbashcommand-linexargs

How to execute sh script for files beginning with minus and including spaces?

I am trying this:

ls | sed 's/.*/"&"/' | xargs sh -- script.sh

for files:

  • -test 23.txt
  • test24.txt
  • te st.txt

but after this, script.sh executed only for:

-test 23.txt
Solution

  • xargs, by default, assumes that the command it is expanding can take multiple arguments. In your example, xargs would have executed 

    sh -- script.sh "-test 23.txt" "test24.txt" "te st.txt"

    If your script only echoes its first argument, then you'll only see -test 23.txt

    You can tell xargs to execute the command for every input by using the -n1 flag.

    In many cases, xargs is not what you want, even coupled with the find command (which has a useful -exec action). When it is what you want, you usually want to use the -0 flag coupled with some flag on the other side of the pipe which delimits arguments with NUL characters instead of spaces or newlines.