Re: -bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long

[Juri Haberland <juri koschikode com>]

N Nair wrote:
> Folks:
> 
>     Is there a  limit to the number of arguments that can be passed to 
> fileutils programs such as mv or rm ? If yes, is it filesystem 
> dependant/kernel config dependant/fileutils version dependant?  Can this 
> maximum limit be tuned/controlled ?  I googled on it a bit, but couldn't 
> find anything much more relevant than a message in the OS-X forum.
> 
> http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-admin/2002-December/027907.html
> 
>     Someone asked me this question in a linux-related forum and I 
> decided to experiment on my box ( RedHat 8.0 running vanilla kernel 
> 2.4.20; fileutils version 4.1.9 ) to find out what the current limit 
> was. I  found that 12806 filenames can be passed to rm at a time without 
> generating the error shown in the subject line. (Took me about a dozen 
> tries to reach this figure.)
> 
>   Your comments would be extremely valuable.

AFAIK it is a limitiation of the command line length of the shell.


Regards,
Juri