xargs with multiple arguments

Question

I have a source input, input.txt

a.txt
b.txt
c.txt

I want to feed these input into a program as the following:

<         


        

Answer 1

Here is a solution using sed for three arguments, but is limited in that it applies the same transform to each argument:

cat input.txt | sed 's/^/--file=/g' | xargs -n3 my-program

Here's a method that will work for two args, but allows more flexibility:

cat input.txt | xargs -n 2 | xargs -I{} sh -c 'V="{}"; my-program -file=${V% *} -file=${V#* }'