[XARGS] Do you need to repeat a command in from a set of resul | LinuxCheatSheet

[XARGS] Do you need to repeat a command in from a set of results? Try xargs
This is one of the old school Unix commands, and it's still useful. Xargs reads by default from a pipe (stdin) a series of values, and use them as a parameter for the command you want to repeat. Let's say you have a bunch of docker images you want to remove from your laptop
[cheats@telegram ~]$ docker images -aq
29c1b56be99f
b802d38857fc
Instead of repeat docker rmi {image_id} many times, you combine the two commands this way
docker images -aq | xargs -r docker rmi
The -r option tell xargs to not execute commands if it receive no input (that is: you have no docker images at all to delete). xargs will automatically append every line in the output of docker images -aq as the last parameter of docker rmi, as if you typed docker rmi {image_id}.
If you want to execute a command and the parameter you want to pass is not the last one, use -I option of xargs, e.g.
command1 | xargs -I{} command2 {} otherparam.
See man xargs for more details.


I hope you like it! Please vote for the channel or share it
https://tchannels.me/c/linuxcheatsheet
http://www.telegramitalia.it/linuxcheatsheet/

Bye
G.