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| | | #redirect [[Some_explanation_to_some_errors_and_warnings#Argument_list_too_long]] |
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| The direct cause is usually having a * somewhere in your shell command.
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| The actual reason is a little lower level.
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| Most shells expand shell globs before it executes a command, so e.g. {{inlinecode|cp * backup/}} actually might happen to expand to a long list of files and/or very long filenames.
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| Either way, it may create a very large string to be handed to the exec() call.
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| When that argument list is too long for the chunk of kernel memory reserved for running commands {{comment|(MAX_ARG_PAGES, usually something like 128KB, and specifically for the environment + command line and probably some other details)}}, a size that is hard-coded in the kernel, you get this error.
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| You can argue it's a design flaw, or that it's a sensible guard against a self-DoS.
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| Short version is that it's a fact of shell life.
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| There are various workable solutions:
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| * if you meant 'everything in a directory', then you can often specify the directory and a flag to use recursion
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| * if you're being selective, then {{inlinecode|find}} may be useful, and it allows doing things streaming-style, e.g.
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| : {{inlinecode|find . -name '*.txt' -print0 | xargs -0 echo}} {{comment|(See also [[find and xargs]])}}
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| * Recompiling the kernel with a larger MAX_ARG_PAGES - of course, you don't know how much you'll need, and this memory is permanently inaccessible for anything else so just throwing somehing huge at is is not ideal
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| Note
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| * that most of these split the set of files into smaller sets, and execute something for each of these sets. : In some cases this significantly alters what the overall command does. <!-- For example, if the command creates (as in replaces) an archive and does this a few times, most of the work will be overwritten and only the last set will be in the file you'll end up with.-->
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| : You may want to think about it, and read up on xargs, and its --replace.
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| * {{inlinecode|for filename in `ls`; do echo $filename; done}} is '''not''' a solution, nor is it at all safe against special characters.
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| : {{inlinecode|ls | while read filename ; do echo $filename; done}} {{comment|(specifically for bourne-type shells)}} works better, but I find it harder to remember ''why'' exactly so use find+xargs.
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| [[Category:Unices]]
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| [[Category:Workaround]]
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| [[Category:Warnings and errors]]
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