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Re: Argument list

X-seq: zsh-workers 17751
From: Jason Price <jprice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "David Gómez" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Argument list
Date: 01 Oct 2002 16:14:33 -0400
Cc: Zsh-workers <zsh-workers@xxxxxxxxxx>
In-reply-to: <20021001195417.GA13192@fargo>
Mailing-list: contact zsh-workers-help@xxxxxxxxxx; run by ezmlm
References: <20021001195417.GA13192@fargo>
Sender: jprice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"David Gómez" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> I created a directory with 100000 files to test the new htree patch
> for the ext3 filesystem, and found a bug when I tried to remove all
> the files.  The command 'rm *' gave the error 'zsh: argument list too
> long'. If expansion doesn't support so many parameters, what it's the
> supossed way to remove all these files without deleting the directory?

This is actually an OS limit rather than a zsh limit.  IIRC, zsh
dynamically alocates space for arguments as needed.  However, the OS
usually has a hard limit set somewhere.

ls | xargs rm

though there's probably a cleaner way.  Season the 'ls' command to
taste.

Jason

References:
- Argument list
  - From: David Gómez

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