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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