APPLY(1)		  BSD General Commands 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 ignored.

     -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	     4.2 Berkeley Distribution

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