Argument list too long

[Robin Laing]

Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
> 
>    Question: at what point would commands such as 'ls', 'cp' and others 
> consider the argument list too long?  The reason I'm asking is because 
> I'm getting random results here.  One time 'ls' would tell it the 
> argument list is too long when the file count in the folder reached 
> around 2,000 files.  Another, like this morning, it let me go all the 
> way to 2,600+ before complaining.  And just now it reached 1,900 files 
> and already 'ls' is complaining.  That seems random to me.  Is there a 
> set number that causes all of these commands to fail with 'Argument list 
> too long' or what convoluted algorithm is used to figure it out?
> 

This is one of those issues that bothers me as well.  The reason for the 
limit is from the "Good Old Days" when memory was expensive and very 
limited.  I normally run into this problem when I have a program that 
has to call a large number of files and then crashes due to the limit. 
mainly usenet downloads.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/6060/print

I did submit a bug report to allow this to be changed with the 
possibility of user selectable option.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=227180

It is a "Won't fix" issue.

With the number of multimedia files on computers, this is becoming an 
issue.  Many applications don't know how to work with xargs by default. 
  Maybe it is time to start putting in bug reports for these applications.

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Robin Laing