RE: xargs: possible bug(s)

[Phil Fisher 02]

Hi Andreas
I am sorry I am now confused.

Your output appears to show the same as my report and I currently
believe this to be incorrect.
My reading of the documentation suggests that  

echo a b c | xargs -I {} -n 6 echo {}

Will return
 a b c

Only.
I.e. there is no {} word in the output.  The {} are the placeholder
reference for xargs in my understanding of the documentation.  That
certainly seems to be given by the ubiquitous example:

$ echo a b c | xargs -I {} mv {} {}.old

That is often quoted.

I would be grateful for further clarification of my understanding.

Phil.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Metzler [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: 27 January 2010 18:11
To: address@hidden; Phil Fisher 02
Subject: Re: xargs: possible bug(s)

On 2010-01-26 Phil Fisher 02 <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Jay
> Thanks for the prompt response.
> I will look and see what seems to be the AIX version implementation.

> Also, on my original "bug report" (please note quotes), xargs appeared

> to reject the use of -I {}.  From what I can see this does not seem to

> be correct.  Can you clarify within your remit?
[...]

Hello,

you were using xargs 4.1.20, a rather old version. I guess this bug has
simply been fixed in the mean time. 4.4.0 does not show the behavior you
described:

address@hidden:~$ echo a b c | xargs -I {} -n 6 echo {} {} a b c
address@hidden:~$ echo a b c | xargs -i -n 6 echo {} {} a b c
address@hidden:~$ echo a b c | xargs -i{} -n 6 echo {} {} a b c
address@hidden:~$ xargs --version xargs (GNU findutils) 4.4.0

cu andreas





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