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Subject: Fw: shell cmds crapping out with large numbers of files
Message-ID: <OFF9929994.5191D165-ON86256EA0.00529D79-86256EA0.0052B6EC@us.ibm.com>
From: Fred Kulack <kulack AT us DOT ibm DOT com>
Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 10:03:26 -0500
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[ Accidentally sent the same thing directly to Bruce. Sorry Bruce. ]

In addition to the other replies.  In general, I've always used the rule 
of thumb that
its a bad idea in these sort of cases to do command line globbing at all.

Seems to me that it doesn't matter much if its echo, ls or some other 
utility/program.

Your shell or the fictional other utility you happen to be using in that 
case could perhaps
hit some sort of limit with 100,000 files. You want to do what you can to 
safely and 
consistently work with the files in a way that won't expose issues with 
the shell or 
any tools you use.

You also probably want to put the data in a pipeline so that you're not 
allocating it all 
at one time anyway. 

I usually use find for this part, it gives you more than enough 
flexibility for
choosing which files to list by size, name, or any old thing:
        find . -name 'PatternMatchingLotsOStuff*' | xargs processFiles


"The stuff we call "software" is not like anything that human society 
  is used to thinking about. Software is something like a machine, and 
  something like mathematics, and something like language, and 
  something like thought, and art, and information... 
  but software is not in fact any of those other things."
Bruce Sterling - The Hacker Crackdown

Fred A. Kulack - IBM eServer iSeries - Enterprise Application Solutions
ERP, Java DB2 access, Jdbc, JTA, etc...
IBM in Rochester, MN  (Phone: 507.253.5982   T/L 553-5982)
mailto:kulack/us.ibm.com   Personal: mailto:kulack/magnaspeed.net
AIM Home:FKulack  AIM Work:FKulackWrk 
MSN Work: fakulack/hotmail.com (replace email / with @)

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