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Full Discussion: mv : Argument list too long
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting mv : Argument list too long Post 302806631 by Corona688 on Monday 13th of May 2013 11:30:19 AM
Old 05-13-2013
The reason that code doesn't complain about too many arguments is because it does absolutely nothing at all, it doesn't run find, it doesn't expand *, nothing, nada, zip. *.* is a DOS thing by the way, not a UNIX one.

The way to avoid too many arguments is to not experiment with quotes and find and backticks until you find a way that stops complaining when you jam too many arguments in the shell... If you find a way that probably means you broke it, because too many arguments is too many arguments no matter how you cut it. The way to avoid too many arguments is to not jam too many arguments into the shell.

Here I limit find's output to one filename, which should do it:

Code:
if [ -f "`find directory2 -type f | head -n 1`" ]
then
...
fi

This User Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
VSom007
 

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LEARN ABOUT OSX

file::find::rule::procedural

File::Find::Rule::Procedural(3) 			User Contributed Perl Documentation			   File::Find::Rule::Procedural(3)

NAME

       File::Find::Rule::Procedural - File::Find::Rule's procedural interface

SYNOPSIS

	 use File::Find::Rule;

	 # find all .pm files, procedurally
	 my @files = find(file => name => '*.pm', in => @INC);

DESCRIPTION

       In addition to the regular object-oriented interface, File::Find::Rule provides two subroutines for you to use.

       "find( @clauses )"
       "rule( @clauses )"
	   "find" and "rule" can be used to invoke any methods available to the OO version.  "rule" is a synonym for "find"

       Passing more than one value to a clause is done with an anonymous array:

	my $finder = find( name => [ '*.mp3', '*.ogg' ] );

       "find" and "rule" both return a File::Find::Rule instance, unless one of the arguments is "in", in which case it returns a list of things
       that match the rule.

	my @files = find( name => [ '*.mp3', '*.ogg' ], in => $ENV{HOME} );

       Please note that "in" will be the last clause evaluated, and so this code will search for mp3s regardless of size.

	my @files = find( name => '*.mp3', in => $ENV{HOME}, size => '<2k' );
							   ^
							   |
		      Clause processing stopped here ------/

       It is also possible to invert a single rule by prefixing it with "!"  like so:

	# large files that aren't videos
	my @files = find( file	  =>
			  '!name' => [ '*.avi', '*.mov' ],
			  size	  => '>20M',
			  in	  => $ENV{HOME} );

AUTHOR

       Richard Clamp <richardc@unixbeard.net>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2003 Richard Clamp.  All Rights Reserved.

       This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

       File::Find::Rule

perl v5.16.2							    2011-09-19					   File::Find::Rule::Procedural(3)
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