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

Nobody has mentioned echoing out from a loop yet, so I'll put that in for completeness sake (it would be my second approach, the sed one being the first):

for line in $(< input.txt) ; do echo --file=$line ; done | xargs echo my-program