APPLY(1) MachTen Reference Manual APPLY(1)

NAME
apply - apply a command to a set of arguments

SYNOPSIS
apply [-ac] [-#] command argument ...

DESCRIPTION
Apply 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 execu-
tion of command.

The options are as follows:

-# Normally arguments are taken singly; the optional number -# speci-
fies 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 -n option is ig-
nored.

-ac The use of the character ‘‘%’’ as a magic character may be changed
with the -a option.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
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.

EXAMPLES
apply echo a*
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.

Files
/bin/sh Default shell

AUTHOR
Rob Pike

BUGS
Shell metacharacters in command may have bizarre effects; it is best to
enclose complicated commands in single quotes (‘’).

HISTORY
The apply command appeared in 4.2BSD.

4.2 Berkeley Distribution April 4, 1994 1