xargs

• better than xargs when running some commands for many files
• do man xargs for help

some uses

convert all files from one extension to another using some other tool

ls -1 | sed -e 's/\.mkv//' | xargs -I _ ffmpeg -i _.mkv _.mp4

• ls -1 prints the files in a folder in one column
• sed -e 's/\.mkv//' remove the extension .mkv from the file name
• xargs -I _ ffmpeg -i _.mkv _.mp4 converts the file to a mp4 file voila!

gnome desktop environment hiding some useless collection of files

find /usr -name "*lsp_plug*desktop" 2>/dev/null | cut -f 5 -d '/' | xargs -I {} cp /tmp/1 ~/.local/share/applications/{}

• find /usr -name "*lsp_plug*desktop" 2>/dev/null prints the name of all .desktop files containing *lsp_plug*, 2>/dev/null ignores any errors
• cut -f 5 -d '/' prints the name of files, -d sets the delimiter -f selects the field
• xargs -I {} cp /tmp/1 ~/.local/share/applications/{} copies the contents of file /temp/1 but uses the manes we generated.