sometimes surprised/confused

[ChessDoter]

Hello,

as another member of this list kindly pointed out, it was a 
misunderstanding of mine to assume misbehavior in parallel. Sorry for that!

From the (mostly private) communication, i offer the following 
"compilation":

Initial post:

> hello,
>
> far from being a power user with linux...
>
> ... i happen to play with parallel...
>
> and get confused/surprised at times. Like so:
>
> echo this should not happen | xargs -n 1 echo | parallel --dry-run -n 2 echo 
> `echo {}`
>
> First, i was not able to separate the 4 words into different arguments with 
> --colsep ' ', so that is why i used xargs in the mix.
> Then, i did not expect --dry-run to allow for execution of the embedded `echo` 
> command.
>
> Ok, i can imagine scenarios, when this comes in handily...
>
> My current conclusion is: be VERY careful with this powerful tool, test 
> thoroughly before execution but even then... (can i trust it?) beware of 
> unexpected side-effects.
>
> just my 2 cents

what i intended to see could instead be produced with the following command:

> echo -n "this should not happen" | parallel --dry-run -d ' ' -n 2 echo \`echo 
> {}\`

which produces:

> echo `echo this should`
> echo `echo not happen`

which in turn could be piped to a shell.

This is to show:
with proper escaping and parameters, it is indeed possible to get what 
my initial intention had been. Sorry for being confused and initially 
blaming outward.

best regards, C.D.