Make xargs handle filenames that contain spaces

Question

$ ls *mp3 | xargs mplayer  

Playing Lemon.  
File not found: \'Lemon\'  
Playing Tree.mp3.  
File not found: \'Tree.mp3\'  

Exiting... (End of file)  

Answer 1

The xargs command takes white space characters (tabs, spaces, new lines) as delimiters.

You can narrow it down only for the new line characters ('\n') with -d option like this:

ls *.mp3 | xargs -d '\n' mplayer

It works only with GNU xargs.

For BSD systems, use the -0 option like this:

ls *.mp3 | xargs -0 mplayer

This method is simpler and works with the GNU xargs as well.

For MacOS:

ls *.mp3 | tr \\n \\0 | xargs -0 mplayer