Question

As part of post-commit hook, I try to copy all the files that changed into a local folder – using this script (attached only the relevant part of the script):

svnlook changed ${REPOS} -r ${REV} | sed "s/^....//" | xargs -I {} svnlook cat ${REPOS} {} -r ${REV} > /tmp/commit2/{}

which won’t replace the second {} with the xargs argument but use it as is (creating a file name ‘{}’).

Is it possible to replace the argument after the output redirect?

Thanks,
Roi

Answer 1

Not like that, no. The shell does the redirections, not xargs. xargs isn’t even “aware” that a redirection is happening.

You could use something like the following:

svnlook changed ${REPOS} -r ${REV} |
  sed "s/^....//" | 
  while read -r line ; do 
    svnlook cat ${REPOS} "$line" -r ${REV} > /tmp/commit2/"$line"
  done