Why does “find . -name *.txt | xargs du -hc” give multiple totals?

Question

I have a large set of directories for which I\'m trying to calculate the sum total size of several hundred .txt files. I tried this, which mostly works:

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Answer 1

xargs busts its input into reasonable-sized chunks - what you're seeing are totals for each of those chunks. Check the man page for xargs on ways to configure its handling of input.