On Apr 24, 2008, at 9:00 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote: > However, there are cases where you want to take a list of filenames > (or other strings) in one-per-line form and turn them into arguments > to a single command; that's what the xargs (cross-arguments) command > is for: > > ls -1 notes-* | xargs cat > > will also do the right thing. And, if the total number of qualifying files is (or might become large while you're skiing in the alps in a couple of years) "large", using xargs is necessary, as command lines (after expansion) are not infinitely long. xargs batches its calls to the program it is calling, if the maximum would be exceeded or as controlled by parameters. "large" varies as the limit is length not count. --John