Linux: xargs with multiple parameters

xargs is an awesome command, that can be used to pass input from stdin as parameters to other commands, also xargs can do other tricks like run commands in parallel etc, in this example, i will show you how to pass multiple parameters to a command.

Create a file with parameters

Create the following file and save it as params.csv

1 2 
3 4 
5 6 
7 8 
9 10

Use the -n parameter

Now enter the following, xargs get the parameter from each line, $0 is the first parameter, and the second is $1

cat params.csv| xargs -n2 bash -c 'echo "$0"+"$1"' 
1+2 
3+4 
5+6 
7+8 
9+10

What if the parameters are not space-delimited? xargs in Linux (in macOS not) supports the -d parameter, allowing you to define the delimiter between parameters. Assuming that the parameters file is like this

1,2 
3,4 
5,6 
7,8 
9,10

Run xargs with the -d parameter like this

cat params.csv| xargs -d ',' -n2 bash -c 'echo "$0"+"$1"' 
1+2 
3+4 
5+6 
7+8 
9+10

Conclusion

xargs is one of the most useful commands, it can leverage simple commands to multiprocessing tools! if you want to do a favor to your self learn as many tricks as you can with xargs and this trick is handy!, I hope you enjoyed this short article!