One argument version of xargs?

adamcannon · 02-06-2008, 11:28 AM

Hello all,

Say I do a cut of a text file and get this result:

$ cut -f2 foo.txt
a
b
c
d
e
f

How would I pipe that to a command that would individually execute each argument? If I use xargs, the column would be combined which works great for commands that accept multiple arguments but the command I'm trying to pipe to only accepts one at a time.

Thanks!

bigrigdriver · 02-06-2008, 11:34 AM

Maybe as a loop:

Code:

for i in $(cut -f2 foo.txt);
do
<some command> [option $i]
done

adamcannon · 02-06-2008, 11:39 AM

Hi bigrigdriver,

Thanks for the quick response! Although I was hoping for a one-liner, that does indeed work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigrigdriver

Maybe as a loop:

Code:

for i in $(cut -f2 foo.txt);
do
<some command> [option $i]
done

adamcannon · 02-06-2008, 11:41 AM

I spoke too soon. It works as one-liner as well

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamcannon

Hi bigrigdriver,

Thanks for the quick response! Although I was hoping for a one-liner, that does indeed work.