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GNU Parallel - build and execute command lines from standard input in parallel

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Re: GNU Parallel - build and execute command lines from standard input in parallel

#5
post #4

In what ways is this better than make -j?

Because it can be run on the command line, ad hoc. Make -j is great for pre-existing command lists and dependencies. But as the man page describes, parallel is like xargs, which I use all the time on the command line for ad hoc actions (frees me from having to write a bash loop).

Re: GNU Parallel - build and execute command lines from standard input in parallel

#7
post #6

It seems like 90% of the uses for this can be taken care of with xargs: echo "file1 file2" | xargs -P 2 gzip

As I understand it, xargs only runs on the local machine; GNU parallel can run on remote machines as well. So parallel is the cluster-friendly version of xargs's -P.
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