On 02/26/2013 04:28 PM, Steve Simon wrote:
> where did xargs come from? I started with Edition 7 (Perkin Elmer
> V7 + bits of BSD 2.1) and I am pretty sure it wasn't there.
>
> -Steve
Mary Ann Horton wrote:
My recollection (supported by my 1990 book) is that
xargs came from PWB
for use with the Mashey shell, before we had the `command` construct.
FreeBSD [1] and NetBSD [2] man pages (see HISTORY section)
seem to confirm PWB as the source.
[1]
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=xargs&apropos=0&sektion=0&…
[2]
http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?xargs++NetBSD-current
scot