APPLY(1)                FreeBSD General Commands Manual               APPLY(1)

NAME
     apply - apply a command to a set of arguments

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

DESCRIPTION
     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
            Bourne 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.

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 ('').

     The apply utility does not recognize multibyte characters.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6        December 13, 2006       FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6