On 7 Sep, 20:09, Icarus Sparry <use...@icarus.freeuk.com> wrote:

> The answer to what you actually want is
>
> PARAM_mac=$(echo $PARAM_mac | sed "s/%3[Aa]/:/g" )
>
> or even
>
> PARAM_mac=${PARAM_mac//\%3[Aa]/:}
>
> if you have a nice modern bash/zsh/ksh

Thanks! That satisfies my basic interest of not using the disk drive.
But I'm still curious
why xargs is designed not to be able to use inbuilt commands.