xargs not working as expected

Ruby

11/10/23, 2:01 AM

On Mac:

sudo powermetrics --samplers smc  | xargs

Never produces any output. Without xargs, it correctly writes my computer's power metrics.

   Machine model: ...
   SMC version: ...
   EFI version: ...
   OS version: ...
   Boot arguments: ...
   Boot time: ...

Why?

I actually wanted to do

sudo powermetrics --samplers smc | ts

and it produced the same empty result. Thought this is a simpler example.

183

0 + 6

linux

mac

jabbson

11/10/23, 2:13 AM

It may help to also include what is `expected`

Ruby

11/10/23, 3:00 AM

A non-zero-length output is expected.

jabbson

11/10/23, 3:40 AM

Let's try it again. What do you expect to happen / to be output when you run the command `sudo powermetrics --samplers smc | xargs`?

Ruby

11/10/23, 3:46 AM

Something along the lines of `Machine model: ... SMC version: ... EFI version: ... OS version: ... Boot arguments: ... Boot time: ...` and then more output every minute or so.

A. Trevelyan

11/10/23, 4:03 AM

@Ruby So is it that you want to be able to run the command `sudo powermetrics --samplers smc` every minute or so? It's not clear what your objective is in the original question. If you just want to run `sudo powermeterics --samplers smc` every minute or so and see a timestamp, you could just do `watch -n60 sudo powermetrics --samplers smc`. If that's not what you want, you need to explain more in your question.

Ruby

11/10/23, 4:09 AM

I run the command once, but it runs indefinitely, periodically writing some output. I found the problem, it must have realized it's not writing to a terminal and is buffering. A strange decision. Any way to fool it into thinking it has a terminal?

Elon Musk

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EN: xargs not working as expected

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