[bug #62043] The xargs -r, --no-run-if-empty Option Is Ignored When a Delimiter Is Passed

[James Youngman]

Follow-up Comment #5, bug #62043 (project findutils):

Andreas writes:

OTOH I am trying to fix the documentation of xargs' inconsistent behavior,
imho these two commands should produce identical output both for consistency
reasons and according to the documentation but do not:
printf '\n' | xargs -r echo foo
printf '\0' | xargs -0 echo foo

These are not supposed to behave similarly.  In its default mode (without -d
or -0), xargs does whitespace and quote processing.  Like so:

horizon:~$ printf 'one "item two is long" three' | xargs   -n1 echo foo
foo one
foo item two is long
foo three
horizon:~$ printf 'one "item two is long" three' | xargs   -n1  -d '\n' echo
foo
foo one "item two is long" three

So the input "\n" has contains one (empty) arg with -d "\n" and contains no
args in the default mode, and contains one arg (a newline) with -0.

You're right though; if the documentation does not make this clear, we should
fix the documentation.




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