xargs and find

xargs is a command on Unix and most Unix-like operating systems. It is useful when one wants to pass a large number of arguments to a command. Until Linux kernel 2.6.23, arbitrarily long lists of parameters could not be passed to a command ^[1], so xargs will break the list of arguments into sublists small enough to be acceptable.

Additional Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xargs

http://www.softpanorama.org/Tools/xargs.shtml

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6522/1/