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Re: [TCLUG:21649] Limits of grep?
On 0, bob@math.umn.edu wrote:
> Subba Rao allegedly wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > I have a directory of 10000+ text files and would like to search for
> > some strings in these files. When I tried using "grep" command with an
> > asterisk, I get the error message somthing to the effect,
> >
> > "File argument list too long"
> >
> > What is the file argument limit for grep? I guess you need the grep source
> > for this. I did not find any information in the man page.
> >
> > Are there any other recommended tools to search through such large list of
> > files?
>
> You might try this:
>
> ls -1 > filelist
> cat filelist | sed 's/^/grep a_string_of_importance /' > filelist
> chmod 700 filelist
> filelist
>
> Yes, it makes a big file. No, you will not need to worry about the dread
> "File argument list too long" message. And finally, yes, there is probably
> a smarter way to do this.
>
Thanks for replying. I tried the following solution and works much faster.
find <path> -print | xargs -n 500 grep <pattern>
Thanks to everyone who replied with some solution!
--
Subba Rao
subb3@attglobal.net
http://pws.prserv.net/truemax/