RE: arg list too long in unix

• kommareddy sreenivasa <kommacnu_at_yahoo.com>

> Hi all,
>
> Is there something like,
>
> unix is unable to use commands like ls -ltr (sort etc)
> when there are huge number of files in a directory(may
> be thousands/millions).
>
> If yes, what is the limit and how to know it on sun
> solaris 2.8.

This is not an issue with the command, but the buffer used by the O/S to store the comman line arguments. Standard sizes are 4KB or 8KB (i.e., on page). If the command line arg's exceed this size then the command cannot be started.

Classic case is a directory with too many files in it; "ls" may work fine but "ls *" will blow up because the shell's expanding "*" overflows the buffer.

If the file names are 500 char's long then you may have problems with only 10 files in the directory [don't laugh, I've seen it].

ls is partcularly bad about dealing with over-populated dir's becuse it sorts the result, which can be expensive in a 10 000 file diredtory; find does not sort anything and is better suited to dealing with huge file lists.

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