Use xargs input in eval command

Question

I have a file "commands.php" that dynamically generates bash commands. For example, one line is:

# - commands.php
ssh [email protected] echo "text" > file; reboot;

How can I use the output of xargs to execute these commands... eval, maybe?

cat commands.php | xargs -L 1 -I {} 'eval "$({})"';

Solution 1

Figured out a way:

cat commands.php | xargs -L 1 -I {} sh -c "{}"

runs each command out of shell... simple enough!

Solution 2

If your PHP file outputs shell commands, you could probably get away with

$( php /path/to/your/script.php )

Or

while read line; do
    $line
done < $( php /path/to/your/script.php )

Comments

[phemmer]

Sounds like XY problem. Why would you want to do this? What's wrong with bash /path/to/file?

[d-_-b]

Hi Patrick, very well could be! I have a file that dynamically generates bash commands, and it is not a .sh file. (I could copy the output to an sh file, but am interested in how to execute each line of a non-sh file

[mattdm]

Everything else aside, is this php script actually. Allen from the web? This seems very risky.

[d-_-b]

@mattdm haha good catch! but yes this is a very secure environment, not some public external file.

[Jeff Hewitt]

Why do you insist on cating the file? A simple redirection would be enough: xargs ... <commands.php

[Ole Tange]

And if you want to do it in parallel, use GNU Parallel: cat commands.php | parallel