GNU parallel explained

Parallel
Parallel
Logo Size:150px
Developer:GNU Project
Latest Release Version:20230522[1]
Programming Language:Perl
Operating System:GNU
Genre:Utility
License:GPLv3

GNU parallel is a command-line utility for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems which allows the user to execute shell scripts or commands in parallel. GNU parallel is free software, written by Ole Tange in Perl. It is available under the terms of GPLv3.[2]

Usage

The most common usage is to replace the shell loop, for examplewhile read x; do do_something "$x"done < listto the form ofcat list | parallel do_somethingwhere the file list contains arguments for do_something and where process_output may be empty.

Scripts using parallel are often easier to read than scripts using pexec.

The program parallel features also

By default, parallel runs as many jobs in parallel as there are CPU cores.

Examples

find . -name "*.foo" | parallel grep bar

The above is the parallel equivalent to:

find . -name "*.foo" -exec grep bar +

This searches in all files in the current directory and its subdirectories whose name end in .foo for occurrences of the string bar. The parallel command will work as expected unless a file name contains a newline. In order to avoid this limitation one may use:

find . -name "*.foo" -print0 | parallel -0 grep bar

The above command uses the null character to delimit file names.

find . -name "*.foo" | parallel -X mv /tmp/trash

The above command expands {} with as many arguments as the command line length permits, distributing them evenly among parallel jobs if required. This can lower process overhead for short-lived commands that take less time to finish than they do to launch.

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.ogg" | parallel -X -r cp -v -p /home/media

The command above does the same as:

cp -v -p *.ogg /home/media

However, the former command which uses find/parallel/cp is more resource efficient and will not halt with an error if the expansion of *.ogg is too large for the shell.

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. GNU Parallel 20230522 ('Charles') released [stable]]. 22 May 2023. parallel. Tange. Ole.
  2. Web site: GNU Parallel . GNU.org.