On 12 Nov 2002, Adam Voigt wrote:
> I have a directory with 39,000 files in it, and I'm trying to use the cp
> command to copy them into another directory, and neither the cp or the
> mv command will work, they both same "argument list too long" when I
> use:
>
> cp -f * /usr/local/www/images
>
> or
>
> mv -f * /usr/local/www/images
>
> Is this a kernel limitation? If yes, how can I get around it?
> If no, anyone know a workaround? I appreciate it.
>
The '*' is expanded by your shell to be a command-line that has
39,000 file-names in it! It is probably way too long for a command-
line (argument list).
The easiest way is to do:
mv -f a* /usr/local/www/images
mv -f b* /usr/local/www/images
mv -f c* /usr/local/www/images
... until the remaining argument list is short enough for the '*' only.
You can also do a loop in a shell if the shell's internal buffer is
big enough for the expanded '*' ...
for x in * ; do mv -f $x /usr/local/www/images ; done
Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.18 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Bush : The Fourth Reich of America
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Nov 15 2002 - 22:00:26 EST