Plus I'm not sure that '-I REPLACE-STR' '--replace[=REPLACE-STR]' '-i[REPLACE-STR]' Replace occurrences of REPLACE-STR in the initial arguments with names read from standard input. Also, unquoted blanks do not terminate arguments; instead, the input is split at newlines only. If REPLACE-STR is omitted (omitting it is allowed only for '-i'), it defaults to '{}' (like for 'find -exec'). Implies '-x' and '-l 1'. The '-i' option is deprecated in favour of the '-I' option.
is enough to make it clear that $ echo a b c|xargs -I{} echo x {} y {} z {} will make x a b c y a b c z a b c and not x a b y z c Nor does it mention that one is actually doing echo x 'a b c' y 'a b c' z 'a b c' and not just echo x a b c y a b c z a b c