[TriLUG] How many character are allowed on the command line?

Joseph Mack NA3T jmack at wm7d.net
Mon May 29 10:28:51 EDT 2006


On Mon, 29 May 2006, Russell Harrison wrote:

> I know I've done bash one liners that wrapped at least a full screen of
> text.  There had to be a good 1000 chars in that one "line".
>
> On 5/29/06, Ralph Blach <rcblach at blach.dnsalias.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I am taking a class in computer science and the professor seems to
>> indicate the the maximum number of character one can enter from the
>> command line is 256 in both Windows command prompt  and the "IX's"
>> command prompt.
>> 
>> From long ago, I seem to remember that this was  256 characters was a
>> limitation of the DOS command prompt in Windows at one time,

I seem to remember it being 128 for DOS.

gnu configure does a test of the max number of chars on a 
command line. You could try configuring something like gcc 
and watch for the test. I seem to remember it being about 
4000.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
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