the 'ls' command fails with the same error too???? that's pretty bizarre. i would go with hegemaro's suggestion of generating a file list.

For the call to tar, I think I will.

The problem shows up in areas where we would not have expected it.

Try removing 5000 files that match *.old
rm *.old fails.

Or try moving 5000 files that match *.dat

I've had to resort to multiple pipes to get the job done that should work with a single command.

ls | grep dat$ |awk '{ print "mv " $0 " /home/mydir/dat_files" }' | sh

is a long way around what should be:
mv *.dat /home/mydir/dat_files

And I'll bet it isn't as efficient.

Production scripts that have worked for years are now failing due to reaching that magic number of files.

I just wish there were a global solution - like setting a system parameter - that would solve it.

Oh well -

Thank you all for your suggestions.

Rick - aka dad5119