HP UNIX version 10.20

I have been using system variable names in some shell scripts in order to automate execution of some test software. I have recently found that there appears to be a restriction with the 'ls' command when listing specific files (e.g. ls *.c). If I pipe the output into wc, I get a return char count value IF it is less than 12,000 (see example below)

ls /home/w9054disk/wright/projects/a318/*.c | wc
(returns)
272 272 9744

This works ok (I then load the output into an array - no problems so far).

However, if I do this on another directory (where the count of files is (say) 20% more) all I get is 'arg list too long'.

Now, I have figured out that it appears to relate to pathname/filename length and the number of entries. Where the magic number of (length of pathname in chars + length of filename in chars) * (number of entries) exceeds 12,000, it does not work. OK, if I go into the directory itself (i.e. no pathname) then in this case it works, BUT, there will come a point where I will go through the magic number again (this is mostly due to the amount of files needing processing).

Does anyone know whether (aka Windows virtual memory limits) there is a user and/or sys admin command I can do (or the sys admin people can do) to increase the limit so that restriction is either moved entirely or at least increased to a higher limit.

This is a real pain at the moment and the system admin people are telling me there is nothing they can do for me.

Thanks for any help, David Wright