Bash: Build and execute command lines on the fly with "xargs"

xargs is a powerful bash tool that can take input from $STDIN and pass it to a given command. I.e. you can do the following:

$> cat tmp/parallel_cucumber_failures.log
features/authentication.feature:33
features/backend/pages.feature:5
features/backend/pages.feature:60

$> cat tmp/parallel_cucumber_failures.log | xargs geordi cucumber
# Running features
> Only: features/authentication.feature:33 features/backend/pages.feature:5 features/backend/pages.feature:60
...

Beside the linked article you might also be interested in reading An Opinionated Guide to xargs Show archive.org snapshot .