Re: File Limit in Kernel?

[Kent Borg]

On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 10:38:55AM -0500, Adam Voigt wrote:
> I have a directory with 39,000 files in it, and I'm trying to use the cp
> command to copy them into another directory, 
> [...]
> "argument list too long"

No, it is not a kernel limit, it is a limit to your shell (bash, for
example).  Look at xargs to get around it.

A related limit is that the popular ext2 and 3 file systems get
inefficient when directories have so many files.  The work-around for
that is to have your files either hashed or organized across a
collection of directories.

-kb