Brian K. White wrote:
It's also possible for there to be discrepencies between the app being run by xargs, and the rest of the system. Maybe the shell and the kernel will tolerate up to 4k (I think it's more like 100 or 400 but no matter) so xargs generates 4k command lines, but maybe appfoo can only handle 1k ? That's not how it works.
Sure it is.
Xargs deals only in the maximum argument list limits (number of args and / or total argument bytes). While I can't say that no command imposes its own limits on the size of arguments lists,
You sure can't.
there's really no reason to do so and I know of no programs that have internal limits to the size of the argument list they will successfully process.
Within the very small world of a modern linux distribution where such things as *conf() exist and sticking to programs supplied by the vendor, maybe you are indeed hard pressed to find an app that doesn't break that assumption.
I'll side with Randall on this one.
Suffice it to say I have seen a larger world.
Not for core commands on any Unix or Linux distribution I've ever seen... and I've used and/or adminned more Unix distributions than I can count on both hands.
You have some body of experience, and an assumption that you haven't seen broken. That is fine and a perfectly reasonable and correct basis for continuing to operate from that assumption by default. Doing so is called being efficient and in tune with your environment. But do not mistake that for gospel.
It's a damned fine assumption. Any unix with core commands that violate his assumption is fundamentally broken.
Consider the implications of this for a while: Why does ./configure run an empirical test, trying progressively larger and larger command lines until it breaks?
which "configure" is that? $ which configure $ Hmmm... it seems that "configure" is *NOT* a standard command. What do you think about that? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org