portability of xargs

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context: https://bugs.gnu.org/53340

how portable is xargs ?  like, beyond POSIX, as autoconf & automake both
support non-POSIX compliant systems.  i want to use it in its simplest
form: `echo $var | xargs rm -f`.

automake jumps through some hoops to try and limit the length of generated
command lines, like deleting output objects in a non-recursive build.  it's
not perfect -- it breaks arguments up into 40 at a time (akin to xargs -n40)
and assumes that it won't have 40 paths with long enough names to exceed the
command line length.  it also has some logic where it's deleting paths by
globs, but the process to partition the file list into groups of 40 happens
before the glob is expanded, so there are cases where it's 40 globs that can
expand into many many more files and then exceed the command line length.

if i can assume `xargs` is available, then i think i can replace all of this
custom logic with a simple call to that.
-mike

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