[bug #38658] If the command exec() fails, xargs terminates prematurely

[Ivan Zahariev]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?38658>

                 Summary: If the command exec() fails, xargs terminates
prematurely
                 Project: findutils
            Submitted by: famzah
            Submitted on: Thu 04 Apr 2013 11:52:23 AM GMT
                Category: xargs
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Wrong result
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 4.4.2
           Fixed Release: None

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Details:

Here is an example:

$ echo 1 2 3 4 5 6 | xargs -n 1 badexec-name
xargs: badexec-name: No such file or directory


What I expect is that "xargs" tries to execute "badexec-name" for every
command line argument from "1" to "6". Total of six execution tries. Similar
to the following concept:

$ echo 1 2 3 4 5 6 | xargs -n 1 rm
rm: cannot remove `1': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `2': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `3': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `4': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `5': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `6': No such file or directory


Being unable to exec() a binary shouldn't be handled in a special way by
stopping to process the incoming command-line arguments, and exiting
prematurely. A call to exec() could fail for many reasons and some of them are
non-permanent, meaning that the next call to exec() for the same command could
be successful.




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