You know the feeling. You just want to do something simple—count the lines in all your shell scripts, or iterate over a list of files and run a command on them. It should take five seconds. Instead, you reach for find and xargs, and suddenly you’re drowning in -print0, -0, and -I {} flags. You just wanted to count lines, not rewrite the Unix specification.
We’ve all been there. We’ve all Googled “how to use xargs with spaces in filenames” for the hundredth time. But why do we accept this as normal?
Complexity isn’t a sign of power; it’s a tax on your attention.
The tension in the developer community isn’t really about whether xargs is useful—it is. The tension is that we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that if a tool comes pre-installed, its friction is a feature. We tolerate mental overhead for routine tasks because we assume the alternative is a bloated, dependency-heavy framework.
Enter bashumerate. It’s a minimal, consistent enumeration tool that replaces the complexity of xargs and for loops. It does exactly what you need without the cognitive gymnastics:
enumerate -f '*.sh' -- wc -l {}
No for loops. No find -exec. No memorizing archaic flags just to pass a filename. It uses a consistent {} syntax across files, lines, ranges, and lists. It’s NUL-safe, pluggable, and handles spaces without breaking a sweat.
If you have to look up the manual every time you use a tool, the tool is using you.
The real magic of bashumerate isn’t just the syntax. It’s the design philosophy. The entire tool is under 150 lines of bash. In an era of 10,000-line monolithic dependencies, 150 lines is a breath of fresh air. It means the tool is completely auditable. You can open the source code, read it in two minutes, and know exactly what it’s doing to your system. If it breaks, you can fix it yourself.
This is the twist we all need to internalize: the best code doesn’t just solve a problem. It eliminates the mental overhead of thinking about the problem. We shouldn’t have to context-switch from writing logic to deciphering shell syntax.
Stop fighting your shell. Stop accepting cognitive overload as a badge of honor. The best tool isn’t the one with the most flags; it’s the one that gets out of your way.
The ultimate feature of any software is invisibility.
FAQ
Q: Why not just master xargs instead of learning a new tool?
A: Because memorizing archaic flags for a routine task isn't mastery; it's masochism. A 150-line script you can actually read and understand saves more time than a man page you'll forget by next week.
Q: What's the practical implication of using bashumerate?
A: You stop writing fragile, error-prone for loops. You get a consistent {} syntax for files, lines, and lists, meaning fewer bugs, NUL-safe handling, and faster shell scripting.
Q: Isn't adding another dependency a bad thing?
A: It's 150 lines of pure bash. It's not a dependency; it's a snippet you can audit in two minutes. If it breaks, you can fix it yourself without waiting for a maintainer.