Question

I was trying to execute a script n times with a different file as argument each time using this:

ls /user/local/*.log | xargs script.pl

(script.pl accepts file name as argument)

But the script is executed only once. How to resolve this ? Am I not doing it correctly ?

Answer 1

 ls /user/local/*.log | xargs -rn1 script.pl

I guess your script only expects one parameter, you need to tell xargs about that.

Passing -r helps if the input list would be empty

Note that something like the following is, in general, better:

 find /user/local/ -maxdepth 1 -type f -name '*.log' -print0 |
       xargs -0rn1 script.pl

It will handle quoting and directories safer.

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To see what xargs actually executes use the -t flag.