Re: [TCLUG:21649] Limits of grep?

["John J. Trammell" <trammell@nitz.hep.umn.edu>]

Subba Rao <subb3@attglobal.net> done wrote:

> I have a directory of 10000+ text files and would like to search for
> some strings in these files. When I tried using "grep" command with an
> asterisk, I get the error message somthing to the effect,
>
> 	"File argument list too long"
>
> What is the file argument limit for grep? I guess you need the grep source
> for this. I did not find any information in the man page.

This message is from the shell; grep is fine with the big lists.
There are a couple ways around it that I'm aware of.  Maybe
someone on the list can contribute a better answer, but these get
the job done:

1. whip up a short perl or shell script to break up the list
2. use find + xargs to break up the list

Hope one of these works for you.
J