On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 05:54:33PM -0800, Mary Ann Horton wrote: > My recollection (supported by my 1990 book) is that xargs came from > PWB for use with the Mashey shell, before we had the `command` > construct. oh indeed, PWB/UNIX 1.0, here's even some source: http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=PWB1/sys/source/s2/xargs.c Sven