GNU Parallel 20110205 (the FOSDEM release) released

[Ole Tange]

GNU Parallel 20110205 (the FOSDEM release) has been released. It is
available for download at: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parallel/

This is a major release as the --pipe option introduces a new way to
work. GNU Parallel has so far been similar to xargs, with --pipe it
becomes somewhat similar to tee. To learn about --pipe see the example
section for uses of --pipe.

But rest assured: No old functionality is changed.

If you want GNU Parallel to be part of your favourite distribution
contact the people maintaining the distribution (complaining on
Twitter is not enough).

New in this release:

* --pipe splits piped data into blocks. Each block is piped to a
  program for processing. The piping and the programs will be run in
  parallel. Useful if the data you want to process is data for a
  program and not arguments.

* --blocksize sets the blocksize in bytes for --pipe. The blocksize is
  approximate. It can deviate as much as the size of one record.
  Default is 1M.

* --recstart sets the string matching the start of a
  record. Default is "".

* --recend sets the string matching the end of a
  record. Default is '\n'. To specify none use --recend "".

  If both --recstart and --recend are set, the end of a record must be
  followed immediately by a start of a record. This is useful if
  either recend or recstart can occur in the middle of a record.

* --remove-rec-sep removes the string matched by --recstart and
  --recend.

* --regexp will make GNU Parallel treat --recstart and --recend as
  regular expressions.

* --output-as-files will put the output of the programs into files and
  instead of giving the output GNU Parallel will output the name of
  these files.

* -N if used with --pipe sets the number of records to read.

* New video showing --pipe at
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ntxT-47VPA

* GNU Parallel was presented at FOSDEM.

* Article in USENIX Magazine ;login: (print)
  http://www.usenix.org/publications/login/2011-02/

* GNU Parallel is now on ohloh.net. Thanks to Wim Muskee.
  https://www.ohloh.net/p/gnu-parallel

* Advanced recursive example. Thanks to Ruarí Ødegaard.
  
http://my.opera.com/ruario/blog/2011/01/24/editing-debian-packages-more-fun-with-gnu

* Small example on using GNU Parallel through 0install (German).
  
http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/gnu-parallel-mit-zero-install-kurzinfo-kein-wi/

* Bug fixes and man page updates.

= About GNU Parallel =

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one
or more computers. A job is can be a single command or a small script
that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical
input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of
URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from
a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into
commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to
use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If
you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to
replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several
jobs in parallel.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as
you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it
possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

You can find more about GNU Parallel at:
http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpaiGYxkSuQ or
at http://tinyogg.com/watch/TORaR/ and http://tinyogg.com/watch/hfxKj/