optimize xargs argument enumeration

Can this usage of xargs argument enumaration be optimized better? The aim is to inject single argument in the middle of the actual command.

I do:

echo {1..3} | xargs -I{} sh -c 'for i in {};do echo line $i here;done'

or

echo {1..3} | for i in $(xargs -n1);do echo line $i here; done

I get:

line 1 here
line 2 here
line 3 here

which is what I need but I wondered if loop and temporary variable could be avoided?

Answer

Try without xargs. For most situations xargs is overkill. Depending on what you really want you can choose a solution like

# Normally you want to avoid for and use while, but here you want the things splitted.
for i in $(echo {1 2 3} );do 
   echo line $i here;
done

# When you want 1 line turned into three, `tr` can help
echo {1..3} | tr " " "n" | sed 's/.*/line & here/'

# printf will repeat itself when there are parameters left
printf "line %s heren" $(echo {1..3})

# Using the printf feature you can avoid the echo
printf "line %s heren"  {1..3}