CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashxargs
Drew LeSueur
Drew LeSueur

Reputation: 20145

How do I use xargs with input containing spaces?

I have a file containing list of newline separated redis keys (containing spaces). For example:

My key 1
My key 2
some other key

How do I use xargs to delete them all from redis.

I want to do something like:

cat file-with-keys | xargs -n1 redis-cli del

But it doesn't work because of the spaces.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 862

Answers (1)

John1024
John1024

Reputation: 113834

If the input is newline-separated, use:

$ cat file_with_keys | xargs -d'\n' printf "<%s>\n"
<My key 1>
<My key 2>
<some other key>

The above illustrates the use of xargs in a pipeline. If the source is truly a file, then cat is not needed:

xargs -d'\n' printf "<%s>\n" <file_with_keys

As an aside, one often wants to provide xargs with the -r or --no-run-if-empty option to prevent the program from running if no arguments are supplied:

xargs -rd'\n' printf "<%s>\n" <file_with_keys

The above assumes GNU xargs. As Jonathan Leffler points out in the comments, other xargs may not support these options. In particular, the xargs on Mac OSX supports neither -d nor -r.

Upvotes: 3

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