[Nottingham] If you like xargs...

[Martin]

Then you'll just love:

parallel


Excellent great GNU-ness to run commands in parallel across multiple CPU
cores or even across multiple remote machines.

parallel to form your own mini-HPC cluster?! :-)


If you need to do the same operation on a number of files, then I rather
like the form:

parallel -j +0 -m command args ::: *

where "command args" is your command and options;
* (or whatever) globs to the list of files you want to process;
the "-j +0 -m" divides all the file names across one instantiation per
processor core.

Leave out the "-m" to have just one file name given to each command
instance.

It even reassembles any output into the correct order as though all the
jobs were run sequentially.


See:
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/parallel

In the man page, there's even links to YouTube vids of what to do!


Cheers,
Martin

-- 
----------------
Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
----------------