apply
— apply a
command to a set of arguments
apply |
[-a c]
[-d ]
[- #] command
argument ... |
The apply
utility runs the named
command on each argument
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
c
- The use of the character ‘
%
’ as a
magic character may be changed with the -a
option.
-d
- Display the commands that would have been executed, but do not actually
execute them.
The following environment variable affects the execution of
apply
:
SHELL
- Pathname of shell to use. If this variable is not defined, the Bourne
shell is used.
The apply
command appeared in
4.2BSD.
Shell metacharacters in command may have
bizarre effects; it is best to enclose complicated commands in single quotes
('').
The apply
utility does not recognize
multibyte characters.