[SOLVED] Is the default delimiter of xargs is newline rather than blanks?

Issue

I try this command:

echo  tony mary | xargs -i -n1 echo "{} said: hello"

I think that xargs's default delimiter is blank characters including whitespace, tabs and newlines. So I think the output of echo should be split into tony and mary. And because I add the option -n1, I expected it to output

tony said: hello
mary said: hello

Instead, it outputs:

tony mary said: hello

Why?

Solution

You need newline delimited input:

$ printf '%s\n' tony mary | xargs -i -n1 echo "{} said: hello"
tony said: hello
mary said: hello

This option is now deprecated, instead prefer the use of:

xargs -I{} ... 

Answered By - Gilles Quénot

Answer Checked By - Marie Seifert (WPSolving Admin)