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From: Eric Blake <ebb9 AT byu DOT net>
Subject:  Re: xargs gives grep/gawk too much
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 20:53:12 +0000 (UTC)
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Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] <BBuchbinder <at> niaid.nih.gov> writes:

> 
> I get the following error message:
> 	xargs: grep: Argument list too long
> I've also gotten an equivalent error from xargs/gawk.

It looks like you are picking up the cygwin version of grep/gawk, so I'm not 
sure why you are getting a failure.  I might expect problems if it were a 
windows-native app, where you have a 32k limit on the args and on the 
environment (but ISTR the limit is distinct between the two; ie. you can pass 
up to 64 k of info to a Windows process).  The xargs --show-limits looks like 
xargs added instead of subtracted, resulting in a buffer size bigger than 32k, 
but that may be okay if it then subtracts the space for the environment later 
on, so I'll have to investigate that.

Can you get things to work with -s?  How much data are you trying to process, 
anyway ('echo path/* | wc')?

-- 
Eric Blake
volunteer cygwin findutils maintainer



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