Splitting command line args with GNU parallel

Question

Using GNU parallel: http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/

I have a program that takes two arguments, e.g.

$ ./prog file1 file2
$ ./prog file         


        

Answer 1

You are looking for -n option of parallel. This is what you are looking for:

./generate_file_pairs | parallel -n 2 ./prog {}

Excerpt from GNU Parallel Doc:

-n max-args
    Use at most max-args arguments per command line. Fewer than max-args 
    arguments will be used if the size (see the -s option) is exceeded, 
    unless the -x option is given, in which case GNU parallel will exit.