Make xargs execute the command once for each line of input

Question

How can I make xargs execute the command exactly once for each line of input given? It\'s default behavior is to chunk the lines and execute the command once, passing multip

Answer 1

Another alternative...

find /path -type f | while read ln; do echo "processing $ln"; done

Answer 2

It seems I don't have enough reputation to add a comment to Tobia's answer above, so I am adding this "answer" to help those of us wanting to experiment with xargs the same way on the Windows platforms.

Here is a windows batch file that does the same thing as Tobia's quickly coded "show" script:

@echo off
REM
REM  cool trick of using "set" to echo without new line
REM  (from:  http://www.psteiner.com/2012/05/windows-batch-echo-without-new-line.html)
REM
if "%~1" == "" (
    exit /b
)

<nul set /p=Args:  "%~1"
shift

:start
if not "%~1" == "" (
    <nul set /p=, "%~1"
    shift
    goto start
)
echo.

Answer 3

execute ant task clean-all on every build.xml on current or sub-folder.

find . -name 'build.xml' -exec ant -f {} clean-all \;

Answer 4

In your example, the point of piping the output of find to xargs is that the standard behavior of find's -exec option is to execute the command once for each found file. If you're using find, and you want its standard behavior, then the answer is simple - don't use xargs to begin with.

Answer 5

The following will only work if you do not have spaces in your input:

xargs -L 1
xargs --max-lines=1 # synonym for the -L option

from the man page:

-L max-lines
          Use at most max-lines nonblank input lines per command line.
          Trailing blanks cause an input line to be logically continued  on
          the next input line.  Implies -x.

Answer 6

If you want to run the command for every line (i.e. result) coming from find, then what do you need the xargs for?

Try:

find path -type f -exec your-command {} \;

where the literal {} gets substituted by the filename and the literal \; is needed for find to know that the custom command ends there.

EDIT:

(after the edit of your question clarifying that you know about -exec)

From man xargs:

-L max-lines
Use at most max-lines nonblank input lines per command line. Trailing blanks cause an input line to be logically continued on the next input line. Implies -x.

Note that filenames ending in blanks would cause you trouble if you use xargs:

$ mkdir /tmp/bax; cd /tmp/bax
$ touch a\  b c\  c
$ find . -type f -print | xargs -L1 wc -l
0 ./c
0 ./c
0 total
0 ./b
wc: ./a: No such file or directory

So if you don't care about the -exec option, you better use -print0 and -0:

$ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0L1 wc -l
0 ./c
0 ./c
0 ./b
0 ./a