Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 17:56:22 -0500 (EST) From: user <user@dhp.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: cp/mv/etc : argument list too long ... I am sick of this Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0512051747390.8684-100000@shell.dhp.com>
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Ok, so I have some big directories with lots of files. If I do mv or cp, it always refuses, telling me: cp: argument list too long so, no problem ... I get creative with things like this: for f in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ; do cp $f* /some/dir ; done lame, but it works. ---- but now I have some dirs that the above does not even work on. One of the numbers or one of the letters has too many files. So I am sick of being childish and hacking up lame for loops just to copy files. Two questions: - what is the number of files that is too many ? (err... arguments) - since I live in 2005, what can I do to my FreeBSD system to upgrade it to handle the directories I have ? How do I fix this so I can do normal, simple command lines instead of butchered ridiculous hacks like above ? thanks.
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