I've read through the man pages for xargs a dozen times and I still can't figure out how to get it to terminate. When I call this at the shell: `xargs echo this is xargs`
I only see output when I press ctrl+d. Isn't there a way to specify that I want xargs to stop after reading a certain number of arguments? So that when I type `xargs echo this is xargs` and press enter I immediately see `this is xargs` without having to press ctrl+d?

I have tried setting the eof flag with -e and -E and neither worked for me when doing so like this: 

`xargs -Ez echo this is xargs z`

I'm asking because I'm trying to write a C program that forks a child and uses execl to call xargs, but my program hangs, so before I try to continue coding the program I want to at least be able to call xargs just right from the command line.