xargs ⚬ˢʰ｜Definition｜1st｜20260707132244-00-⌔

xargs - Wikipedia

xargs

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xargs (short for “extended arguments”)¹ is a command on Unix and most Unix-like operating systems used to build and execute commands from standard input. It converts input from standard input into arguments to a command.

Some commands such as grep and awk can take input either as command-line arguments or from the standard input. However, others such as cp and echo can only take input as arguments, which is why xargs is necessary.

A port of an older version of GNU xargs is available for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.² A ground-up rewrite named wargs is part of the open-source TextTools³ project. The xargs command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.⁴

Printed 2026-07-07.

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Footnotes

1. “The Unix Acronym List: The Complete List”. www.roesler-ac.de. Archived from the original on 2012-07-16. Retrieved 2020-04-12. ↩

2. “Native Win32 ports of some GNU utilities”. unxutils.sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on 2006-02-09. Retrieved 2025-08-11. ↩

3. “Text processing tools for Windows”. Archived from the original on 2022-03-22. Retrieved 2022-03-22. ↩

4. IBM. “IBM System i Version 7.2 Programming Qshell” (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-09-05. ↩