Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xargs

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Wifione ^Message 16:29, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Xargs

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Deprodded with primary source. Doesn't seem individually notable. Couldn't find any real sources. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 00:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:44, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep: just as notable as any other UNIX standard command line utilities. It is covered in several books including O'Reilly's Linux in a Nutshell and several other books, Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide and other similar sources. Some usable online sources also exist (see [1] or [2] for example). — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 03:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That you couldn't find any sources raises a question: Where on Earth were you looking? Czarkoff is, if anything, woefully understanding the case with that "several". There are books documenting this going back for three decades. (I have one on the bookshelf next to me right now, ISBN 9780810462893 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: checksum which discusses xargs on pp. 271–272, that was first published in 1986.) How did you manage to miss looking in books? Uncle G (talk) 13:59, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Well, I was just lazy to search for more, and thus used the most modest term applicable. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:22, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep —Ruud 20:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Undecided. I'm pretty sure this utility is notable (even by Wikipedia's ridiculous criteria), but notability is only a sufficient, not a necessary condition for the existence of an article: there must also be an article's worth of encyclopaedic material on the subject, and I have a hard time imagining what that could be, besides a list of example uses like we're seeing now, or a rewording of material that is more authoritatively explained in xargs's own documentation. Rp (talk) 12:14, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Did you want to say "notability is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition"? Apart of evident wikilawyering I could start, there is a more practical suggestion: there are different implementations of xargs, the history of the utility, similar utilities on other OSs and (probably) several papers on xargs with some interesting material – plenty of things to cover in the article. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Yikes - yes, that's what I meant, sorry! Sure, such things probably exist, but it remains to be seen to what extent they are worth mentioning in an encyclopedia - then again, much the same can be said about many articles in different categories. Rp (talk) 14:09, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy keep: xargs is one of the more Notable and important Unix commands. See http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/applying-xargs http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6522/1 and http://pjps.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/multiprocessing-with-xargs/ --Guy Macon (talk)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.