Argument list too long: out of environment space

From: Stuart Inglis (stuart@intelligenesis.net)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 15:33:18 EST

Hi all,

I have 9600 files in a directory and have troubles processing them. I
thought it was a bash problem but Chet Ramey kindly informed me that
it's a Linux kernel limitation.

bash-2.03$ cd tttt/
bash-2.03$ echo * | wc
      1 9569 279676
bash-2.03$ getconf ARG_MAX
131072
bash-2.03$ grep hello *
bash: /bin/grep: Argument list too long
bash-2.03$ sort *
bash: /bin/sort: Argument list too long
bash-2.03$

Why is this limit so small? There are only 9600 files taking a total of
less than 300k to specify all of the names. The machine has 100's of Mb
of RAM. Is it easy to change/fix?

cheers
Stuart

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