Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Message-ID: From: "Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID)" To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: RE: Limit to length of command line arguments? (was Cygwin/bash: need environment variables >32K) Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 16:57:59 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id h9OKwWM3000987 There are no unusual file names. Everything starts with a consonant. As an example, in bash $ echo N* | wc 1 3332 73218 $ ls N* | wc bash: /bin/ls.exe: Invalid argument 0 0 0 $ echo i* | wc 1 4 41 $ ls i* | wc 4 4 45 sh behaves the same except for the error message $ ls N* | wc ls: error 22 0 0 0 If I give ls an argument that is 32730 characters long, I get the following: $ ls `gawk 'BEGIN {for (N = 1; N < 32730; N++) {printf "X"}; print "";exit}'` bash: /bin/ls.exe: Invalid argument While if I give it an argument 32729 characters long $ ls `gawk 'BEGIN {for (N = 1; N < 32729; N++) {printf "X"}; print "";exit}'` XXXX[snip]XXXX: File or path name too long So something changes when the command line arguments get too long. - Barry -----Original Message----- From: Jörg Schaible [mailto:Joerg DOT Schaible AT Elsag-Solutions DOT com] Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 2:53 AM To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: RE: Limit to length of command line arguments? (was Cygwin/bash: need environment variables >32K) Hi Barry, Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) wrote on Thursday, October 23, 2003 12:43 AM: > While doing some other work, I've come to the impression that > this is not a fileutils problem. In a directory with ~1700 > htm files whose names take 37k, > $ ls * > bash: /bin/ls.exe: Invalid argument > > There has been a big change my cygwin installation since last > week. I got a new box, upgrading from Win98SE to XP Pro. So > this is a new installation of cygwin, but other than this > line-length problem, everything seems to be working OK > (ignoring minor glitches probably due to various > configuration files getting lost in the transition). > > Although I could re-do my scripts to work around this problem > I'd appreciate any help in figuring out what is wrong with my cygwin > installation. You might have an unusual filename (e.g. starting with a dash) that is interpreted as argument. Try $ ls -- * This tells ls to interpret anything after the double dash as file argument and not as possible option! Regards, Jörg -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/