Arg list too long - while using unix shell commands.

[Peter Rooke]

Hi ranchers - just a quick Solaris shell question. I keep getting a - "arg list too long" as I'm dealing with a large volume of files. So for example:

$ tar cvf swift_processed_old.tar swift.536* ksh: /bin/tar: arg list too long

My way round this would be to use a for loop:

for file in `ls -1` do tar uvf swift_processed_old.tar $file done


But does anyone know how this can be done quicker? (thanks in advance )

[Lester Burnham]

Check out the xargs utility - it can be used to get around this problem. Not sure if it's going to be faster than using a loop, though.

[Peter Rooke]

Thanks - speeds not an issue as I'm just tar'ing and compressing to make room! Got to keep the sys admins happy

Did a quick trawl on the web and found this: http://blog.kloppmagic.ca/archives/2004/12/21/using-xargs/