From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Nov 16 10:57: 7 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from fw.wintelcom.net (ns1.wintelcom.net [209.1.153.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6F51037B479 for ; Thu, 16 Nov 2000 10:57:05 -0800 (PST) Received: (from bright@localhost) by fw.wintelcom.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) id eAGIuse10665; Thu, 16 Nov 2000 10:56:54 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 10:56:54 -0800 From: Alfred Perlstein To: Sebastiaan van Erk Cc: Zero Sum , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: argument list too long Message-ID: <20001116105654.G830@fw.wintelcom.net> References: <20001116091607.A97857@sebster.com> <00111621362707.00522@shalimar.net.au> <20001116122313.A69018@sebster.com> <00111700205500.61931@shalimar.net.au> <20001116145641.A22842@sebster.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20001116145641.A22842@sebster.com>; from sebster@sebster.com on Thu, Nov 16, 2000 at 02:56:41PM +0100 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG * Sebastiaan van Erk [001116 05:57] wrote: > Zero Sum wrote: > > > No, that was not what I was suggesting. But you are describing a common > > problem - not just with tar, so I gave a general solution so that it > > covered similar problems. I then went on to cover your problem specificaly. > > This is NOT a general solution. The problem is that if you want to give > a _generic_ number of _ARGUMENTS_ to a program, then you run into the > "argument list too long" error. Xargs does nothing except split something > which you want to do in _ONE_ process into _SEVERAL_. So this is definately > a workaround, and not a solution to the problem. The only real solution > is some _generic_ way to be able to read command line arguments from file. Can you please suggest a reasonable limit to the argument list? Would a gigabyte work for you? maybe. Will that cover all mega-long arg lists? no. Solution: use xargs. bye, -- -Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org] "I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message