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Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:29:37 -0600
From: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
To: Wojciech Puchar <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl>
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Cc: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: argument list too long
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In the last episode (Feb 27), Wojciech Puchar said:
>> one can easily write:
>> 
>> 	find . -name '*.ogg' | \
>> 	while read file ; do \
>> 		blah "${file}"
>> 	done
>> 
>> xargs(1) is another popular tool for processing large argument lists:
>> 
>> 	find -name '*.ogg' | xargs blah
> 
> unless program "blah" starts slowly, and it's better to give it 2000
> params at once.
> 
> but i've asked to be sure what is actual limit, and used xargs -n
> 2000 to do the rest.

That's less than xargs's default of 5000 :)  The xargs manpage explains
it all.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@allantgroup.com