History: what is the meaning of the name ‘xargs’

historyxargs

The common unix utility program grep is an abbreviation of "globally search a regular expression and print", which makes grep a case of "does what it says on the tin". The name informs us of the functionality of the program.

Is there a similar history behind the name of 'xargs'? Does the name have any meaning that helps as mnemonic in the same way as grep does?

Best Answer

The description in the Unix System 5 administrator's reference manual, the X/Open Portability Guide, and the System V Interface Definition is:

xargs — construct argument list(s) and execute command

These pre-date by years Wolfram Roesler's 1993 Unix Acronym List which calls it "extended arguments". As does Gordon A. Moffet's xargs clone published in 1986 whose manual says:

xargs — execute a command with many arguments

However: Whilst the System 5 doco and the clone doco might lead one to conclude that yes "x" relates to "execute", "extend" per Wolfram Roesler's Unix Acronym List is in fact more likely the case. Herb Gellis's own commentary on the subject implies that xe wrote it to extend the then limit of 512 bytes on filename expansion in the Mashey shell.

Herb Gellis is apparently still alive. You could ask xem. ☺

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