| APPLY(1) | 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 d́th 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.
 
- 
-ac
- 
The use of the character “%” as a magic character may be changed with the -a option.
 
ENVIRONMENT
 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.
 
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/joé *
- 
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 ('').