apply(1)

Usage

apply [-a c] [-d] [-#] command argument ...

Overview

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.

Environment

The following environment variable affects the execution of apply:

SHELL: Pathname of shell to use. If this variable is not defined, the POSIX shell is used.

Files

/bin/sh: default shell

Examples

apply echo *: is similar to ls(1);
apply -2 cmp a1 b1 a2 b2 a3 b3: compares the `a' files to the `b' files;
apply -0 who 1 2 3 4 5: runs who(1) 5 times; and
apply ´ln %1 /usr/joe´ *: links all files in the current directory to the directory /usr/joe.

Releases

87 releases since FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE; the text changed 47 times.

-d since FreeBSD 3.4-RELEASE.

Referred to by

xe(1) execute a command for every argument