From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from euclid.skiles.gatech.edu (list@euclid.skiles.gatech.edu [130.207.146.50]) by werple.net.au (8.7/8.7.1) with ESMTP id AAA04125 for ; Tue, 13 Feb 1996 00:24:15 +1100 (EST) Received: (from list@localhost) by euclid.skiles.gatech.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) id HAA23294; Mon, 12 Feb 1996 07:50:58 -0500 (EST) Resent-Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 07:50:58 -0500 (EST) From: Zoltan Hidvegi Message-Id: <199602121249.NAA01279@bolyai.cs.elte.hu> Subject: Re: zsh arg list too long To: hniksic@srce.hr Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 13:49:53 +0100 (MET) Cc: jarausch@igpm.rwth-aachen.de, zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu In-Reply-To: <199602121217.NAA09795@jagor.srce.hr> from "Hrvoje Niksic" at Feb 12, 96 01:17:20 pm Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary Phone: (36 1)2669833 ext: 2667, home phone: (36 1) 2752368 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 PGP3 *ALPHA*] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-Message-ID: <"qmcbu3.0.uh5.nUp7n"@euclid> Resent-From: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/760 X-Loop: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu Precedence: list Resent-Sender: zsh-workers-request@math.gatech.edu Hrvoje Niksic wrote: > In your mail, you said: > > Last time I only tried rm ~/.netscape-cache/* > > and it failed because there were (only) 576 files (filename length 24) > > I noticed it too. It should not be OS restriction, since it works in other > shells. I am afraid it is a zsh bug. What other shells does it work? The `arg list too long' message comes from the OS. If the arg list is long execve fails and sets errno to E2BIG. Builtin zsh commands can have arbitrary long argument lists. If you do not believe me, grep the zsh source for the arg list too long message. You won't find it. The maximum allowed length of the argument list is very OS dependent. E.g. on Linux I can do: bolyai /l/src % /bin/echo ([nzk]|t[^au])*/**/*|wc 1 4346 127155 But here 128k is the maximum. On Ultrix and probably on other OS'es as well the limit is much lower. Note that you must use /bin/echo above since the echo builtin can have any number of arguments. Cheers, Zoltan