Assume, someone searches for files that match some criteria using the find command and pipes the result into the rm command.find / -type f -name *.jpg | xargs rm First, I am not sure if the command above will get an error if the number of found files is very big, because I guess there is a limit to the number of arguments a command like rm can hold. Than, I know that I can set how many files are passed as arguments at once to rm. Xargs with -n3 would, for instance, pass three arguments to rm execute the command and repeat it until all files have been passed as arguments. Now does it make somehow a difference what value I take for the -n option of xargs ?  Do these command lines differ in some aspect , like for instance the duration of execution: find / -type f -name *.jpg | xargs rm find / -type f -name *.jpg | xargs -n1 rm find / -type f -name *.jpg | xargs -n2 rm find / -type f -name *.jpg | xargs -n3 rm...find / -type f -name *.jpg | xargs -n999 rm  
Makes it a difference whether I use a different -n flag value for xargs in combination with find command ?
command line;find;xargs
The limitation you mentioned is generally about the exec buffer used, not specific to individual commands. The purpose of xargs is exactly to address that problem; xargs will take as many arguments as possible to feed the command. This will get you the least command calls and thus good performance. Reducing the amount of arguments for the command by explicitly specifying -n will not gain anything in this respect. You can use -n e.g. in cases where the commands expect a specific number of arguments, with the special case that the command can be called once for each argument. (Note that findhas also an option -exec and a special terminator + to facilitate a similar behaviour.)