You can skip xargs altogether with the plus sign instead of semicolon. -exec utility [argument ...] {} + Same as -exec, except that ``{}'' is r

You can skip xargs altogether with the plus sign instead of semicolon. -exec utility [argument ...] {} + Same as -exec, except that ``{}'' is replaced with as many path- names as possible for each invocation of utility. This behaviour is similar to that of xargs(1). The problem with just wc -l *.java is that it don't recursive directory.