Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I'm trying to list specific files and redirecting to a file

ls a[0-9]qp* > temp.lst

but getting "/usr/bin/ls: 0403-027 the parameter list is too long." error. I just have 236 files in the directory.

I tried "ls | grep 'a[0-9]qp*' > temp.lst" too, but nothing was redirected.

+ grep a[0-9]qp*
+ ls
+ 1> temp.lst
+ echo 1
1

When I try the commands in command line it is working fine, but inside the script it is failing.

Could somebody help in this? I got stuck here a quite a while

If you are not using any options, you don't need ls; printf is built into most shells and thus not subject to any limits other than memory:

Code:

printf "%s\n" a[0-9]qp* > temp.lst

Hi,

I tried that too, getting the same error,

/usr/bin/printf: 0403-027 The parameter list is too long.

What shell are you using?

If you use bash, ksh93 or dash, you will not have that problem.

(I'm assuming, of course, that you don't use the full path to the command.)

That's the nick Johnson,

I was using the directory path in ls, which was causing the problem. I removed that and it worked as charm.

Thank u for your help