Sheldon Hearn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Apr 2001 16:51:24 +0200, Oliver Fromme wrote:
> > That can overflow your shell's command line limit (at the
> > "for" command). True, our /bin/sh doesn't has such a
> > limit, AFAIK, but there _are_ shells that do).
>
> That's actually my point. What's being proposed is a non-standard
> extension to work around a problem on a system that already doesn't have
> the problem.
Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough.
We _do_ have a problem.
Not all users use /bin/sh. Scripts needn't be written
in /bin/sh, and xargs can be used interactively, too (I
use it a lot). Just because _our_ xargs works fine with
_our_ /bin/sh doesn't mean there is no problem.
And then there's the gross efficiency problem. Try these
alternatives and compare how long they take:
for i in `find /usr/ports -type f`; do
cat $i >/dev/null
done
find /usr/ports -type f | xargs cat >/dev/null
The latter is a hell of a lot faster. (The example uses
"cat" just because it works with xargs.)
By the way, the first (inefficient) approach could be
rewritten like this:
find /usr/ports -type f | while read i; do
cat $i >/dev/null
done
This avoid the potential line limit problem, but of course
it's just as inefficient.
Regards
Oliver
--
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Oettingenstr. 2, 80538 München
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