bash Cookbook

Working Around “argument list too long” Errors

Problem

You get an “argument list too long” error while trying to do an operation involving shell wildcard expansion.

Solution

Use the xargs command, possibly in conjunction with find, to break up your argument list.

For simple cases, just use a for loop or find instead of ls:

$ ls /path/with/many/many/files/*e*-/bin/bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long


# Short demo, surrounding ~ are for illustration only
$ for i in ./some_files/*e*; do echo "~$i~"; done
~./some_files/A file with (parens)~
~./some_files/A file with [brackets]~
~./some_files/File with embedded
newline~
~./some_files/file with = sign~
~./some_files/file with spaces~
~./some_files/file with |~
~./some_files/file with:~
~./some_files/file with;~
~./some_files/regular_file~


$ find ./some_files -name '*e*' -exec echo ~{}~ \;
~./some_files~
~./some_files/A file with [brackets]~
~./some_files/A file with (parens)~
~./some_files/regular_file~
~./some_files/file with spaces~
~./some_files/file with = sign~
~./some_files/File with embedded
newline~
~./some_files/file with;~
~./some_files/file with:~
~./some_files/file with |~


$ for i in /path/with/many/many/files/*e*; do echo "$i"; done
[This works, but the output is too long to list]


$ find /path/with/many/many/files/ -name '*e*'
[This works, but the output is too long to list]

The example above works correctly with the echo command, but when you feed that "$i" into other programs, especially other shell constructs, $IFS and other ...