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bashxargs

Get the sequence number of xargs command

echo a b c | xargs -n 1 will output:

a
b
c

Is there any way to get the output with sequence number as below:

a1
b2
c3

Thank you!

Hatjhie

Solution

  • Use awk and its special NR placeholder:

    echo a b c | xargs -n 1 | awk '{print $1NR}'

    Result:

    a1
b2
c3

    You can pipe those results again. Notice we set a placeholder called % (using -I %) which we can reuse. For instance:

    echo a b c | xargs -n 1 | awk '{print $1NR".zip"}' | xargs -I % git archive -o % HEAD