[TriLUG] argument list too long

[Mike Norwood]

Thanks for all the replies. If anyone is interested I also found a link to 
a Linux Journal article that talks about this limit.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6060

Mike.

On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, Scott Chilcote wrote:

> Hi Mike,
> 
> There are a number of ways to handle this, depending on what you're 
> trying to do.
> 
> As mentioned, xargs is the primary solution.
> 
> You can also use echo to list the files:
> 
>     echo *
> 
> And find:
> 
>     find . -maxdepth 1 -exec ls -l {} \;
> 
> You can replace "ls -l" in this command line with commands that do other 
> things.
> 
> You can also use regular expressions to chunk up the arguments:
> 
>      ls -l [A-Z]*
>      ls -l [a-z]*
> 
> Enjoy...
> 
> Scott C.
> 
> Mike Norwood wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I have a directory on a Redhat 7.2 machine that has over 11000 files in 
> > it.  If I try to ls, cp, mv or rm this I get a message "Argument list too 
> > long".  I can do what I need to do with the files in other ways, but I am 
> > just curious is there a way to get past this.  I did some google searches,
> > but can't find anything that clearly says what causes this limit and if
> > there is a way to expand it.
> > 
> > Thanks in advance.
> > 
> > Mike Norwood
> > 
> 
> 
> 
>