What is the default behavior of xargs?

The default behavior of xargs is to read items from standard input (stdin) and pass them as arguments to a specified command. If no command is specified, xargs will use the echo command by default. Here are the key points of its default behavior:

1. Whitespace Delimiter: xargs treats whitespace (spaces, tabs, and newlines) as delimiters, meaning it will split the input based on these characters.

2. Single Command Execution: By default, xargs will try to pass all the input items as arguments to a single invocation of the command, unless the input exceeds the system's argument limit.

3. Handling Multiple Lines: If the input consists of multiple lines, xargs will concatenate them into a single command line, passing as many arguments as possible.

For example, if you run:

echo -e "apple\nbanana\ncherry" | xargs

The output will be:

apple banana cherry

This shows how xargs combines the input items into a single line and passes them to the default command (echo).