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From:	"Herb Martin" <HerbM AT learnquick DOT com>
To:	<cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject:	Xargs positioning the arguments in a command -- is this a bug or a feature?
Date:	Sat, 27 Aug 2005 18:47:11 -0500
MIME-Version:	1.0
Message-ID:	<EILWNEN-000BVS-BV@mail2.learnquick.com>
X-Sign-LQC:	HerbM AT learnquick DOT com/2005-08-27 18:47:13/<cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>=dielwiqf

CygWin 1.5.18

I was trying to create a date-time-sortable list of
files with an appended tag for each entry (ham or
spam flag if you care about the detail) and had some
difficulty with xargs:

dir -gGtcr --time-style=+%Y%m%d%X | cut -c 24- | xargs -i -n 2 echo {}
MORE_STUFF

...doesn't work -- i.e., "{}" appears in the output.

However, reversing the switches does work as expected:

dir -gGtcr --time-style=+%Y%m%d%X | cut -c 24- | xargs -n 2 -i echo {}
MORE_STUFF

I am curious if this is expected behavior as I didn't
see any warning in the xarg --help or man/info entries.

It is an unusual command that requires switches to 
appear in a specific order, especially when the 
switches are not directly dependent on each other.

--
Herb Martin


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