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 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.

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.