Re: Numerically sorted arguments (in shell)

Helmut Waitzmann wrote:

 If ‘p_sort’ is designed to output the sorted file names separated
 by an ASCII NUL character rather than a newline then, using the
 GNU version of ‘xargs’, one can feed that output into ‘xargs’:
 
   {
     p_sort P*.HTM 3<&- |
     xargs --null --no-run-if-empty -- sh -c \
     'exec 0<&3 3<&- "$@"' sh \
     viewer
   } 3<&0

NUL as a record separator is also supported by several other versions
of xargs, and it is in the recently released POSIX.1-2024 standard.
In all of those it is specified with -0, so using -0 is more
portable than the GNU-specific --null.

POSIX.1-2024 also has -r although I think that's not as widely
supported in current xargs implementations as -0.  It should become
better supported over time, though, so again I would suggest using -r
rather than --no-run-if-empty for better future portability.

--
Geoff Clare <netnews@gclare.org.uk>