parallel

Run commands on multiple CPU cores. More information: https://www.gnu.org/software/parallel.

• Gzip several files at once, using all cores:

parallel gzip ::: path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

• Read arguments from stdin, run 4 jobs at once:

ls *.txt | parallel -j4 gzip

• Convert JPEG images to PNG using replacement strings:

parallel convert {} {.}.png ::: *.jpg

• Parallel xargs, cram as many args as possible onto one command:

args | parallel -X command

• Break stdin into ~1M blocks, feed each block to stdin of new command:

cat big_file.txt | parallel --pipe --block 1M command

• Run on multiple machines via SSH:

parallel -S machine1,machine2 command ::: arg1 arg2

• Download 4 files simultaneously from a text file containing links showing progress:

parallel -j4 --bar --eta wget -q {} :::: path/to/links.txt

• Print the jobs which parallel is running in stderr:

parallel -t command ::: args