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From: Mikhail Teterin <mi+mx@aldan.algebra.com>
Organization: Virtual Estates, Inc.
To: Juli Mallett <jmallett@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: feature request for xargs
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 10:33:03 -0400
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On Thursday 20 June 2002 08:57 pm, Juli Mallett wrote:
= > Something like ``xargs -j<N>'' which would spawn off up and wait for up
= > to N processes. Currently it acts as if N was 1. Specifying 0 should
= > mean no limit at all. Flag ``-j'' to resemble similar feature of make.
=
= Tim J. Robbins and I have been discussing this for a while, and Tim had
= a patch.  I'm CC'ing him, and I'm sure if he still has diffs, he'll be
= glad to send them here for review I'm sure.
=
= I'd been hesitant on this, until we were clear on how it could and would
= be used, but an arch@ review is probably enough :)

Here is the usage, for which I currently use make(1). Every once in a
while, I have to process a big collection of images -- scanned and/or
taken with a digital camera. A scripts I have, work on one image at a
time, but I have two processors, so -- with the Makefile -- I do ``make
-j2''. This works good, but may be done simpler with something like

	echo *.JPG | xargs -n1 -j2 <script>

-- without the makefile, in other words.

All operations, involving many light tasks can benefit, i.e.

	find /some/dir \! -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -j0 rm -f

(-: Does any other OS have anything similar?

	-mi


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