In issuing the following command to BASH on RH 8.0 I receive the error
"bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long"  What gives?

Command issued was:

ls *.txt

Surely there's a way around this, but the man and info pages don't
really have any information in this regard.  Any help is always
apprecaited, thanks,

Rob

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On 14 Dec 2003 15:52:15 -0800, Rob Baxter wrote:
quote:

> In issuing the following command to BASH on RH 8.0 I receive the error
> "bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long"  What gives?
>
> Command issued was:
>
> ls *.txt
>
> Surely there's a way around this, but the man and info pages don't
> really have any information in this regard.  Any help is always
> apprecaited, thanks,



Today's Tip of the Day, very large
Frequently Asked Questions (faq) Search engine:

http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
Argument list too long	in the first box
*linux*			in the Newsgroup, pick English

Results 1 - 10 of about 5,080. Search took 2.02 seconds

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just do a 'find . -name "*.txt" -exec WHATEVER_COMMAND {} \;'

That will show you all files, or just replace the exec with ls to just see
the file names.


"Rob Baxter" <rbaxter@cyence.com> wrote in message
news:baea5fa.0312141552.f389bb5@posting.google.com...
quote:

> In issuing the following command to BASH on RH 8.0 I receive the error
> "bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long"  What gives?
>
> Command issued was:
>
> ls *.txt
>
> Surely there's a way around this, but the man and info pages don't
> really have any information in this regard.  Any help is always
> apprecaited, thanks,
>
> Rob

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On 14 Dec 2003 15:52:15 -0800, Rob Baxter
<rbaxter@cyence.com> wrote:
quote:

> In issuing the following command to BASH on RH 8.0 I receive the error
> "bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long"  What gives?
>
> Command issued was:
>
> ls *.txt
>
> Surely there's a way around this, but the man and info pages don't
> really have any information in this regard.  Any help is always
> apprecaited, thanks,
>

ls | grep '\.txt$'


--
Thanks to Nigeria, any email with the word "urgent" in the subject
or address will be deleted.

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On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:52:15 -0800, Rob Baxter wrote:
quote:

> In issuing the following command to BASH on RH 8.0 I receive the error
> "bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long"  What gives?
>
> Command issued was:
>
> ls *.txt
>
> Surely there's a way around this, but the man and info pages don't
> really have any information in this regard.  Any help is always
> apprecaited, thanks,
>
> Rob


Well thats interesting.  Check the ls command first to see if it has been
aliased to something odd.  Type "alias" by itself and see if there is a
listing for ls.  Or just nuke any alias by typing "unalias ls".  Then try
the command.

If no aliases exist you have found a bug.  Type this:
"sh --version"
To get your version of bash.  Mine is
GNU bash, version 2.05b.0(1)-release (i686-pc-linux-gnu)

Perhaps RedHat has an update for you?

I hope something in this helps you.

MS

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Michael Studer wrote:
quote:

> On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:52:15 -0800, Rob Baxter wrote:
> 
[...][QUOTE]
> Well thats interesting.  Check the ls command first to see if it has been
> aliased to something odd.  Type "alias" by itself and see if there is a
> listing for ls.  Or just nuke any alias by typing "unalias ls".  Then try
> the command.
>
> If no aliases exist you have found a bug.


It's not a bug. It's expected behavior, and precisely what xargs(1) is
meant to solve:

find . -name \*.txt | xargs ls

Cheers,
M.

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On Tue, 16 Dec 2003 06:11:11 +0000, Matias Atria wrote:
quote:

>
> It's not a bug. It's expected behavior, and precisely what xargs(1) is
> meant to solve:
>
>     find . -name \*.txt | xargs ls
>
> Cheers,
> M.


Oh really?  Hmm then I must have a bug on my system.
quote:

> ls *.txt

junk.txt  junk1.txt  junk2.txt

MS

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Michael Studer wrote:
quote:

> On Tue, 16 Dec 2003 06:11:11 +0000, Matias Atria wrote:
> 
>
>
> Oh really?  Hmm then I must have a bug on my system.
>
> 
>
> junk.txt  junk1.txt  junk2.txt
>
> MS


The original poster has a lot of .txt files and *.txt when expanded is
too long a string to fit in the command line buffer which has a finite
length.  The find / xargs combination is a known way of dealing with
this situation.

So in that respect, it IS expected behaviour.

Except I never expect it when it happens to me :-)

Cheers

JK

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Rob Baxter wrote:
quote:

> In issuing the following command to BASH on RH 8.0 I receive the error
> "bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long"  What gives?


Your shell is performing pathname expandsion on "*.txt" and the result
is too big for the command line buffer. This is a common problem
quote:

> Command issued was:
>
> ls *.txt


It doesn't matter, any command fed *.txt unquoted(') will exhibit the
same problem.
quote:

> Surely there's a way around this,

Many ways, for example:
ls | grep '\.txt$'
find -name "*.txt" | xargs ls
su root then ls *.txt
quote:

> but the man and info pages don't
> really have any information in this regard.


You are right, the correct place for this is ...
man bash /pathname expansion
man xargs
but the man pages on RH8.0 are poor in this regard.

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Michael Studer wrote:
quote:

> Matias Atria wrote:
> 

Because the buffers built into shells are of finite size.
[QUOTE] 
> 
>
> Oh really?  Hmm then I must have a bug on my system.
>
> ls *.txt
> junk.txt  junk1.txt  junk2.txt


So did you really seriously expect 3 whole filenames to blow
the internal buffers of the shell?  Right, I thought not.

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