zsh arg list too long

zsh arg list too long

[Helmut Jarausch]

Sorry, I could find it in the FAQs althoug it should be a common problem.
On my machine (SGI,IRIX6.1) I often get the error "zsh arg list too long".

Last time I only tried   rm  ~/.netscape-cache/*
and it failed because there were (only) 576 files (filename length 24)

Is this a general restrictions of my OS or is ZSH configurable to allow
longer parameter lists?

Thank you for your help,

Helmut Jarausch.

Re: zsh arg list too long

[Hrvoje Niksic]

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.

-- 
hniksic@srce.hr              |  Student of electrical engineering
http://www.srce.hr/~hniksic/ |  University of Zagreb, Croatia
------------------------------------------------------------------
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Re: zsh arg list too long

[Zoltan Hidvegi]

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> 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

Re: zsh arg list too long

[Geoff Wing]

jarausch@igpm.rwth-aachen.de (Helmut Jarausch) wrote:
:Sorry, I could find it in the FAQs althoug it should be a common problem.
:On my machine (SGI,IRIX6.1) I often get the error "zsh arg list too long".
:Last time I only tried   rm  ~/.netscape-cache/*
:and it failed because there were (only) 576 files (filename length 24)
:Is this a general restrictions of my OS or is ZSH configurable to allow
:longer parameter lists?

Hrvoje.Niksic@public.srce.hr (Hrvoje Niksic) replied:
:I noticed it too. It should not be OS restriction, since it works in other
:shells. I am afraid it is a zsh bug.

The limitation is imposed by the OS.  You can usually find it in 
/usr/include/sys/syslimits.h  as something like ARG_MAX (256Kb on my machine)
According to POSIX: "The number of bytes available for the combined
argument list and environment list is given by ARG_MAX macro in <limits.h>"

Look through the /usr/include/**/*limit* files or try something like:  
% fgrep ARG_ /usr/include/**/*.h

Zoltan mentioned that the builtin echo wasn't limited thus, so maybe you 
could do
% echo ~/.netscape-cache/* | xargs rm
or maybe this will work if there aren't too many
% (cd ~/.netscape-cache; echo *)

-- 
Mason [G.C.W]  mason@werple.mira.net.au    "Hurt...Agony...Pain...LOVE-IT"