Follow-up Comment #3, bug #52137 (project findutils): Hello,
agreed regarding addition of warning and doc-update. > "But I cannot see posix requiring that -I and -n must produce > strange results, so xargs could go beyond posix and produce > correct results in that case anyway." Actually POSIX saying that -I and -n are mutually exclusive is not arbitrary. The specification of -I and -n cannot be fullfilled at same time, except for the degenerate case (one line with a single argument): -I [...] utility is executed for each logical line from standard input. Arguments in the standard input shall be separated only by unescaped [newline] characters, not by [blank] characters. -n [...] Invoke utility using as many standard input arguments as possible, up to number arguments maximum. Therefore because POSIX requires this behavior ... ametzler@argenau:/tmp$ echo a b | xargs -n1 echo x x a x b ametzler@argenau:/tmp$ echo a b | xargs -I {} echo x {} x a b ... mixing -L and -n *must* produce strange results (or an error). _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?52137> _______________________________________________ Message sent via/by Savannah http://savannah.gnu.org/