[TriLUG] argument list too long

[Scott Chilcote]

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
>