Confirming operations with `xargs -p`

xargs is a great tool to take a lot of input and execute a lot of different commands based on that input. Sometimes though, if you are performing destructive or mutative actions with xargs you want to proceed more cautiosly.

> echo "banana apple orange" | tr ' ' '\n' | xargs -n1 echo "I like"

This outputs:

I like banana
I like apple
I like orange

But maybe I don't like some of those things, please ask! Including the p flag with xargs forces a prompt.

> echo "banana apple orange" | tr ' ' '\n' | xargs -p -n1 echo "I like"
echo I like banana ?...n
echo I like apple ?...y
I like apple
echo I like orange ?...n

Yep, I only like apples.

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