bash limits ?

[Henry Spencer]

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, Peter L. Peres wrote:
> Thanks. Is the argument list too long, as in too many words, or too many 
> bytes in it ?

It can be either, in fact, although "too many bytes" is much more likely.

> ./[0-9][0-9]/[0-9][0-9]/[0-9]{8}
> I read the names of all these files using 'ls .' or equivalent...

Uh, "or equivalent"?  What, exactly, is doing the name reading, and how?
That is more likely to be the problem area than the shell.

> I am not sure where it fails. I think that the argument list passed to for 
> is too long...

"for" being a shell builtin, that basically shouldn't happen.  I don't say
it's impossible, but it seems far more likely that you're being misled and
the problem is elsewhere.

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org

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