How can I pass all arguments with xargs in middle of command in linux

Question

I want to pass all the files as a single argument on Linux but I am not able to do that.

This is working

ls | sort -n | xargs  -i pdftk  {} cat outpu         


        

Answer 1

You can do this by chaining two calls to xargs. Use the first to chain all of the args together into one string and pass that as a param to echo, and the second using -I to place that chain of args into the place where you want it, as follows:

ls | sort -n | xargs echo | xargs -I {} pdftk {} cat output combinewd2.pdf