David, Thanks for the rapid reply & assistance. Here are the results;
BTW: I do dislike Windows & Outlook, but everything is setup for my wife since I am gone much of the time.Format (MM.DD.YY for sanity sake, otherwise, no problem). ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.01.01/* | wc -l 5935 ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.02.01/* | wc -l 2919 ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.03.01/* | wc -l 4219 ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.04.01/* | wc -l 2710 ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.05.01/* | wc -l 3632 As I stated earlier, everything works fine until I reach 05.*.01, Also, something else I tried & it worked, I can do the following; Cp -fa /home/ftp/tmp/2001/07.*.01/ /home/tmp/whatever/ -> Copies directories & files Change to the directory of /home/tmp/whatever/ Cp -fa ./07.*.01/* . Copies all files into parent directory. This really has me going now. Not sure what the deal is. Also, There are two different file systems as well. /home/ftp/tmp resides on /dev/hda3 /home/tmp/ resides on /dev/ida/c0d0p5 I really don't see how any of this has something in common. Cp works fine across file boundaries, the files are not uncommonly large, it can copy directories&files, but not files with directories above 04 ??? Seems abit odd to me, and probably that has never been encountered before, I tend to be an odd ball in all environments as well as Linux! Phillip -- ...and then Mr. Phillip Kimble said... % % Greetings, Hello! % % I recently stumbled across a strange problem using cp which I do not % understand. Here is the scenario; ... % Cp -far /home/ftp/tmp/2001/01.*.01/* /home/user/admin/tmp/ % % All worked well for 01, 02, 03, 04, (Jan, Feb, Mar, & Apr). Once I % entered 05.*.01, I received the error, "Argument list is too long". What do you get when you run ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.01.01/* | wc -l ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.02.01/* | wc -l ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.03.01/* | wc -l ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.04.01/* | wc -l ls -1 /home/ftp/tmp/2002/01.05.01/* | wc -l at your shell prompt? I suspect that there are lots of files in .05 but not so many files in .01 - .04 dirs. HTH & HAND :-D -- David T-G * There is too much animal courage in (play) [EMAIL PROTECTED] * society and not sufficient moral courage. (work) [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mary Baker Eddy, "Science and Health" http://justpickone.org/davidtg/ Shpx gur Pbzzhavpngvbaf Qrprapl Npg! _______________________________________________ Bug-fileutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-fileutils