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Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2006 21:48:57 -0700
From: Eric Blake <ebb9 AT byu DOT net>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Argument list too long
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According to Long, Phillip GOSS on 12/3/2006 8:48 PM:
> What is SHELL set to in your environment?  If it's not set to /bin/bash,
> it's may be defaulting to CMD.EXE, which has a line-length limitation,
> whereas bash (and I'm guessing most other shells in Cygwin as well) does
> not - at least, not as far as I can tell.  I think bash just allocates
> as much memory as it needs to handle the command line, which is the
> sensible approach.

Actually, Windows has a puny command line length compared to most OS'es,
but even Linux and Solaris have limits (you have to use something like GNU
Hurd to completely avoid arbitrary limits).  The limit is enforced by the
OS, not the shell (in other words, it is not bash that allocates the
command-line memory in the child process, but cygwin1.dll itself).  At one
point, cygwin inherited the Windows limitations unless you used 'mount
- -X', which told cygwin to use tricks to bypass Windows command line limits
by using shared memory instead.  But thanks to recent cygwin improvements,
the 'mount -X' behavior is now the default when one cygwin program invokes
another, regardless of your mount settings.  Are you sure you don't need
to upgrade?  But when a cygwin app invokes a non-cygwin app, you are back
to Window's limits of 32k; there's nothing cygwin can do about it, either.

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- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             ebb9 AT byu DOT net
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