On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:56:11PM -0300, Juan Manuel Cabo wrote: > On 02/20/2012 11:06 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 02:00:20AM +0100, Adam D. Ruppe wrote: > > ... > > Yeah I remember that. I thought they've since fixed it, though. > > That's more a bash limitation than anything, AFAIK. Besides, what > > *were* you trying to do with such a long command-line anyway? :-) > > ... > > I can think of one case where the command line argument limit is a > problem: copying or moving files from a huge directory. In that case, > to do it with bash, there is no other way around but to do things such > as iterate over the alphabet to copy the files that start with 'a', > then the ones with 'b'..
for x in *; mv $x dest/$x; done Easy. :) [...] > > But then again, I *did* also have to deal with having to repair a > > remote Linux server whose dynamic linker broke, causing basic > > commands like ls, cp, chmod, to be completely non-functional. In > > fact, *nothing* worked except that last remote login running bash. > > In the end I had to use bash's built-in echo command to recreate a > > statically-linked busybox binary via copy-n-pasting over the > > terminal, in order to get things back into working condition again. > > (Yeah. Definitely not for the faint of heart.) [...] > That is so COOL!! I remember f*cking up one of my first linux > computers that way. If I had known, I wouldn't have to go back to > reinstall the many diskettes of slackware (no live cds at that time!, > no easy way to fix the fs). [...] That is only cool in retrospect. I remember sweating bullets at the time, thinking twice about every command I typed, lest I accidentally lose that last ssh session into the box. (New ssh connections don't work, for the same reasons.) Especially tense was when I used xclip to copy 10000 echo commands into the paste buffer and then pasted the result into the ssh terminal. You have no idea what a sigh of relief it was when it was finally done and the connection was still alive. :-P The slightest slip, like an accidental EOF at the wrong place in the paste, and it's bye-bye ssh connection, bye-bye remote server. T -- "I'm running Windows '98." "Yes." "My computer isn't working now." "Yes, you already said that." -- User-Friendly