APPLY(1) General Commands Manual APPLY(1)
NAME
apply — apply a command to a set of arguments
SYNOPSIS
apply [−#] [−d] [−a magic] command argument ...
DESCRIPTION
apply runs the named command on each given argument in turn.
Character sequences of the form “%d” in command, where ‘d’ is a digit from 1 to 9, are replaced by the d’th following unused argument. In this case, the largest digit number of arguments are discarded for each execution of command.
The options are as follows:
−#
Normally arguments are taken singly; the optional number −# specifies the number of arguments to be passed to command. If the number is zero, command is run, without arguments, once for each argument.
If any sequences of “%d” occur in command, the −# option is ignored.
−a magic
Use magic as the magic character instead of the default ‘%’.
−d
Debug mode. Print commands to the standard output but do not actually execute them.
ENVIRONMENT
SHELL
Pathname of shell to use. If this variable is not defined, the Bourne shell is used.
FILES
/bin/sh
default shell
EXAMPLES
Operate similar to ls(1):
$ apply echo *
Compare the a* files to the b* files:
$ apply -2 cmp a1 b1 a2 b2 a3 b3
Run who(1) five times:
$ apply -0 who 1 2 3 4 5
Link all files in the current directory to the directory /home/joe:
$ apply ’ln %1 /home/joe’ *
SEE ALSO
sh(1), xargs(1)
HISTORY
The apply command appeared in 4.2BSD.
AUTHORS
Rob Pike
BUGS
Shell metacharacters in command may have bizarre effects; it is best to enclose complicated commands in single quotes (’’). GNU September 8, 2014 APPLY(1)