xargs
Hacker ApprovedRanked 13 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
Standard Unix tool that builds commands from piped input, used for parallel runs with -P and feeding find results. Caveat: options are easy to forget and filenames with spaces can break it.
Standard Unix tool that builds commands from piped input, used for parallel runs with -P and feeding find results. Caveat: options are easy to forget and filenames with spaces can break it.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 25
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 25 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Runs commands in parallel with -P
“My go-to for fast and easy parallelization is xargs -P.”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “4x faster network file sync with rclone (vs rsync) (2025)” “I stick to xargs -P99 these days and am happier.”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “xargs can run parallel processes”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” - Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “The RAM shortage comes for us all”
- Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs”
Combines with find and shell tools
“you can combine find with xargs (or parallel), which also handles it and optionally allows you to specify exactly how many arguments to process per call”
Comment from 27 Jul 2026 in “DskDitto: Ultra-fast, parallel duplicate-file detector” “It’s worth learning about swiss army utilities like xargs that make this easy (and fun)”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs” “plain shell scripts, sed, awk, grep and xargs”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Perl's decline was cultural” - Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Telling a Computer to Do Things”
Handles spaces in filenames via null
“Completely eliminates the problem of dealing with whitespace in the filenames.”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “That won't save you from weird file names, but null termination will.”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “Always use -0. Most gnu utilities support it.”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” Limits arguments per command call
“you can combine find with xargs (or parallel), which also handles it and optionally allows you to specify exactly how many arguments to process per call”
Comment from 27 Jul 2026 in “DskDitto: Ultra-fast, parallel duplicate-file detector” “I might not have written `el` if I had been aware of `xargs -n/--max-args=1`”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “when a lot of commands will take many targets for a single invocation”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Options are hard to remember
“I read the -I and -J options and my brain glazes over”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “I spend the brain capacity on remembering the details on that rather than xargs”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “I always have to look up find and xargs syntax.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “You Need to Ditch VS Code” Breaks on odd filenames and {} substitution
“you will want `xargs` but `{}` substitution is also very error-prone”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “You Need to Ditch VS Code” “xargs gets you the spaces in filenames landmine”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs” “i often find xargs ends up biting me”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
All 35 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“advanced tools like 'find' or 'xargs'”
“bash, xargs, wget, make, etc are well-understood, well-maintained tools”
“you can combine find with xargs (or parallel), which also handles it and optionally allows you to specify exactly how many arguments to process per call”
“I spend the brain capacity on remembering the details on that rather than xargs”
“learn 2 tiny things vs start depending on some new tool whose only purpose is to let you avoid learning those 2 tiny things”
“GNU's has this with -d/--delimiter, but BSD's, and thus macOS's, doesn't.”
“I might not have written `el` if I had been aware of `xargs -n/--max-args=1`”
“Understanding of xargs, helps you complete the mission without blowing off limbs.”
“obviates the need to write anything new whatsoever”
“I never liked xargs either.”
“i often find xargs ends up biting me”
“xargs can run parallel processes”
“xargs gets you the spaces in filenames landmine”
“Always use -0. Most gnu utilities support it.”
“Completely eliminates the problem of dealing with whitespace in the filenames.”
“Another feature missing in find that xargs has is the maximum processes to start at a time.”
“That won't save you from weird file names, but null termination will.”
“when a lot of commands will take many targets for a single invocation”
“I stick to xargs -P99 these days and am happier.”
“the great thing is, as others say, xargs -I”
“the downside of xargs is that you have to specify the number”
“Literally just use xargs with -I {} and quotation marks?”
“I read the -I and -J options and my brain glazes over”
“a drop-in replacement for xargs -P and GNU parallel”
“I’m surprised to see not enough people using xargs, or maybe I overuse it”
“It’s worth learning about swiss army utilities like xargs that make this easy (and fun)”
“xargs enables all sorts of conveniences”
“My go-to for fast and easy parallelization is xargs -P.”
“the result of xargs -P is unlikely to be satisfactory”
“I always have to look up find and xargs syntax.”
“you will want `xargs` but `{}` substitution is also very error-prone”
“I can get the transfer done in under an hour this way.”
“plain shell scripts, sed, awk, grep and xargs”
“I still have to do a search (or use an LLM) to do anything useful with sed, xargs, etc.”
“And xargs to paralelize stuff.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.