Re: xargs feature request...

[Linda A. W.]

James Youngman wrote:
> The program run by xargs is invoked directly with execvp(), and so the
> arguments are not processed by the shell at all.  This means that
> spaces and other special characters in the file names (if they are
> file names) are not treated specially at all.  For this reason it
> shouldn't be neccessary to use quotes.
>
> The only time things don't work out quite this way is when the program
> you are invoking is itself a shell script.
---
	I think this has been the case a few times.  As for worrying about quotes 
within my filenames, yes, it could be a concern, but quotes in file
names are less likely than spaces in my usage.


  In this situation the
> arguments will be correctly passed to the shell script but the script
> may not be processing such arguments directly.  Within the script,
> spaces within the filenames are protected by correct quoting, for
> example "$@".
---
        Would that put double quotes around the entire argument list rather 
than each item?


> The xargs program also, by default, separates its arguments with
> spaces.  When it is operating in this mode, it does interpret quotes
> as I think you are hoping.  However, if you need to process arguments
> which contain spaces and newlines, it is best to use xargs' "-0"
> option, which corresponds to find's "-print0" action.
---
        Should the -0 option ... yeah, I guess it should thinking about
how they are passed....I'll give that a try to see if it clears up some of
my space/quote clutter...

Cheers!
Linda