Very beautiful. Of course now you have to deal with xargs' wacky syntax and options for string interpolation, which is probably why people don't do this. Compa

Very beautiful. Of course now you have to deal with xargs' wacky syntax and options for string interpolation, which is probably why people don't do this. Compare: for i in {1..5}; do echo file_$i; done with seq 5 | xargs -I % echo file_% I had to look up the manpage for xarg's -I, while the for loop uses a small number of orthogonal features entirely in my "working set". This is also why people "uselessly" use cat.