Sal Ferrarello
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xargs: warning: options –max-args and –replace/-I/-i are mutually exclusive, ignoring previous –max-args value

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This threw me for a loop so I’m writing this down to help others (and likely me in the future). I swear I’ve used “xargs” with both “-I” and “–max-args” in the past but now I’m getting this warning and things are behaving improperly. It turns out there are two version of xargs, (FreeBSD xargs and GNU xargs). FreeBSD xargs is installed on BSD systems (including MacOS) and GNU xargs is found on on Linux systems. This warning (and the incorrect result you also get) indicate you’re running GNU xargs.