Re: MAX_ARG_PAGES

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Tue, 26 Jul 2005, Andy Fry wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm executing a script and coming across the good old "Arg List too long"
> problem. I can get round it using the find command, but since part of the
> script does an scp of the file to another server, it's proving quite
> intensive. i.e. it's making a separate scp connection for each file, rather
> than one for the whole lot.

What's wrong with xargs?  Since scp doesn't allow the --target-directory
(-t) argument of cp, you could do something like

find . ... | xargs -r /bin/sh -c 'scp "$@" target_directory' DUMMY

The above should copy substantially more than one file per connection,
unless you have *really* long filenames.  You do need the DUMMY parameter
(or else you'll lose the first filename).

> Under Linux I would tweak the MAX_ARG_PAGES to allow a larger Argument list.
> Is it possible to do something similar on Cygwin ? And if so, how ?

Not that I know of.  IIRC, the argument list length limitation doesn't
apply if Cygwin exec mechanisms are used, so if the above isn't good for
you, try mounting the executable (scp?) with the -X option (see the mount
man page for details).
HTH,
	Igor
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