From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Nov 16 3:23:20 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from eeyore.sebster.com (e163161.upc-e.chello.nl [213.93.163.161]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6712037B4C5 for ; Thu, 16 Nov 2000 03:23:15 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 18337 invoked by uid 1000); 16 Nov 2000 11:23:13 -0000 Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 12:23:13 +0100 From: Sebastiaan van Erk To: Zero Sum Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: argument list too long Message-ID: <20001116122313.A69018@sebster.com> References: <20001116091607.A97857@sebster.com> <00111621362707.00522@shalimar.net.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <00111621362707.00522@shalimar.net.au>; from count@shalimar.net.au on Thu, Nov 16, 2000 at 09:36:27PM +1100 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Zero Sum wrote: > Man 'xargs'. I know what xargs does. Do you want me to use xargs to run tar many times, appending some files each time? That's a pretty lousy solution if you ask me. > FWTW, the size of the command line buffer is a charatristic of the shell > you use not the operating system. Don't be so quick to attack or you make > a fool of yourself. eeyore(ttype:9:0):/usr/src/usr.bin> strings /usr/bin/tar | grep "Argument" Argument list too long Oh really, then why is that string part of the tar binary. Why does it come from /usr/src/lib/libc/gen/errlst.c? Why does it seem to be part of libc? And why DIDN'T Linux have any problems (tried using both tcsh and bash on both Linux and FreeBSD). I didn't attack any OS (other than perhaps DOS), I just stated my opinion that I don't like having limits on argument lists. > Oh, and... The way to use tar and find is... > > find . -name "*.jsp" -depth | tar -czvf jsp.tgz > > Which won't tell you that your argument list is too long. You're right. It didn't. It also made an EMPTY tar file (except for a header). I don't see anywhere in the tar manpage that you use it in this way to get a file name list from stdin (and it doesn't work for me). In fact, I read the man page several times because I couldn't figure out how to do just that. And I still don't know. Thanks for the -depth option. That worked, even though it's not directly obvious from the man page (yes, I did read it) that this is the way to do it. > So if you had used find and tar correctly you would not have had a problem > which led to you making an inappropriate and irrelevant slur on an > operating system of which you demonstrate a lack of fundamental > understanding. Well, using your fundamental understanding didn't help me much either. > I would heartily recommend looking reading Unix manual until you know what > it's genral features are and how it works. > > Sorry, I've had a bad day. So you try to make yourself feel better by trying to spoil other people's day? By insulting people who have legitimate questions? And by blurting a lot of incorrect information? > Geoff This mailing list is so people can HELP eachother. If you don't know how to help people or can't do it in a friendly way, then do us all a favor and don't answer email on this mailing list. Greetings, Sebastiaan van Erk To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message