[Linux-disciples] xargs -0

[Stephen R Laniel]

How does one use xargs -0 along with commands that an
argument to go in a specific place? E.g., what do I do if I
want to copy a bunch of files into a given directory? I'd do
something like

[command] |xargs -0 cp [destDir]

but that won't work, because xargs doesn't know that destDir
is supposed to be the final argument. With 'mv', one can do
better, because it has a --target-directory option:

       --target-directory=DIRECTORY
	      move all SOURCE arguments into DIRECTORY

So then we could do, e.g.,

grep -Zirl [pattern] [sourcePath] |xargs -0 cp --target-directory=[destPath]

But 'cp' has no such argument. In general, do we have to
rely on the kindness of other commands to output
null-separated filenames?

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
steve at laniels.org
Cell: +(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/
PGP key: http://laniels.org/slaniel.key
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