Question

I have a file like this.

rm a.txt
mkdir foo
cp a.doc docs

I am used to xargs but following command is not doing anything.

cat commands.txt | xargs -l1

Answer 1

you are doing it wrong! if your file is all shell commands, treat it as a shell script.

#!/bin/bash
rm a.txt
mkdir foo
cp a.doc docs

then on command line , chmod u+x commands.txt

./commands.txt

the “defacto” naming convention for shell script ends with extension .sh, although it can be anything. So try to name your script as “.sh” extension