Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:21:11 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: John Almberg <jalmberg@identry.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: limit to number of files seen by ls? Message-ID: <4A680F67.7050300@infracaninophile.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <EACC9988-E37E-4F5F-AC03-8E664E015C3C@identry.com> References: <EACC9988-E37E-4F5F-AC03-8E664E015C3C@identry.com>
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This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enigB5D8D18C78C45234E1563A51 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable John Almberg wrote: > I seem to have run into an odd problem... >=20 > A client has a directory with a big-ish number of jpgs... maybe 4000.=20 > Problem is, I can only see 2329 of them with ls, and I'm running into=20 > other problems, I think. >=20 > Question: Is there some limit to the number of files that a directory=20 > can contain? Or rather, is there some number where things like ls start= =20 > working incorrectly? There's a limit to the number of arguments the shell will deal with for one command. So if you type: % ls -lh * (meaning the shell expands '*' to a list of filenames), you'll run into that limitation. However, if you type % ls -lh and let ls(1) read the directory contents itself, it should cope with 4000 items easily. [It might slow down because of sorting the results, but for only 4000 items that's probably not significant] Now, if your problem is that these 4000 jpegs are mixed up with other files and you only want to list the jpeg files, then you could do something like this: % find . -name '*.jpeg' -print0 | xargs -0 ls -lh or even just: % find . -name '*.jpg' -ls Cheers, Matthew --=20 Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard Flat 3 PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate Kent, CT11 9PW --------------enigB5D8D18C78C45234E1563A51 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (FreeBSD) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEAREIAAYFAkpoD24ACgkQ8Mjk52CukIx/fACdEiHHPhT2xHONIOZ6DU3ODo40 /GwAn25WyOcnN3pmCyY2uZBNO/9X+noq =sNqG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------enigB5D8D18C78C45234E1563A51--
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