[[APi]TheMan]

xargs is a variable you can use to control program input in the command line, right?

Does anyone know how to use it?

[kvm_mkdb]

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:
xargs is a variable you can use to control program input in the command line, right?

Does anyone know how to use it?

No xargs is a command -- from the manpage:

The xargs utility reads space, tab, newline and end-of-file delimited arguments from the standard input and executes the specified utility with them as arguments.

For example:

% find . -name *.pdf -print0 | xargs -0 open

will open all *.pdf files below the current directory (the -print0 and -0 flags are just to escape names containig white space)

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by kvm_mkdb:


No xargs is a command -- from the manpage:

The xargs utility reads space, tab, newline and end-of-file delimited arguments from the standard input and executes the specified utility with them as arguments.

For example:

% find . -name *.pdf -print0 | xargs -0 open

will open all *.pdf files below the current directory (the -print0 and -0 flags are just to escape names containig white space)

Right on. My bad. hehehe

I was thinking along the lines of:
% kill `ps -aux | grep iTunes`

I know this won't work because grep can't strip the line of column 2 where the PID would be. (I forgot the name of the other two grep-like programs that do that stuff.)

Anyways, I thought xargs did that kinda stuff.

[butter71]

% kill `ps -aux | grep iTunes`

cut can cut out parts of the line. you can also use awk, perl, python, ruby, .. but that's a bit overkill.

if you are just looking to kill some named process, you can use killall

[fitter]

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:

Right on. My bad. hehehe

I was thinking along the lines of:
% kill `ps -aux | grep iTunes`

I know this won't work because grep can't strip the line of column 2 where the PID would be. (I forgot the name of the other two grep-like programs that do that stuff.)

Anyways, I thought xargs did that kinda stuff.

Nope, you're thinking of awk:

% kill `ps auxww | grep iTunes | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }'`

[T u r b o]

Or simply:

killall iTunes

- Mike

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by fitter:


Nope, you're thinking of awk:

% kill `ps auxww | grep iTunes | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }'`

Yeah, I knew how to do it at one point... then forgot... And upon typing my post I forgot the names of those other two awk and sed.

I've used awk '{print $2}' and similar syntax before... Thanks Comes in handy.

[P]

Originally posted by fitter:
Nope, you're thinking of awk:

% kill `ps auxww | grep iTunes | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }'`

If you're entering awk anyway, why not do the greping there as well - much faster? Oh well, it's still slower than killall - if you include the time it takes to type...