alt Hacker NewsBecause xargs is faster. Exec will invoke the command once per matching file (which is sometimes what you want, of course)!
While xargs will accumulate a bunch of file names, then when it as n names will invoke the command with those names, while continuing to accumulate names until n is reached or the pipe closes.
The size of n depends on the system, but is usually at least a thousand.
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ggm • yesterday at 11:32 PM
The prior has a point because 98.89% of the time I type xargs -n 1 -0 and we are deep in the useless pipe argument which Rob Pike amongst others has rehearsed well.
I do it because I do it, just like why I use egrep and sed in pipes along with awk.
the example as given does not accumulate, so that is what i worked with.
accumulates file arguments too. the only advantage of xargs is that you can tell it how many arguments to accumulate,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶s̶i̶d̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶x̶a̶r̶g̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶f̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶u̶m̶b̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶a̶s̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶f̶i̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶.̶