Shell Programming and Scripting

This is one of shell things I guess. I have a directory in a production server that contains about 20,000 files. It gets cleaned up every week and is kept in check that it does not get out of hand.
Here is my problem.

When I perform a ls -ltr, I get the listing. However should I parameterize the ls command using *Z or * something I get an error message as follows

PROD >ls -ltr *.Z
ksh: /usr/bin/ls: 0403-027 The parameter list is too long.

What can be done to overcome this shortfall. Yours thoughts and feedback are greatly appreciated. Thanks. Jerardfjay

try

Code:

ls -ltr | grep '.Z'

Which is basically a hack.

Jim,

That works fine, Thanks. But I was trying to find out why passing a parameter to the ls command with a wildcard returns the error message that the paramter list being too long. Is this a shortfall with shell or is it a shortfall of 'ls'. Either way what should be done to overcome this error for the ls command? Jerardfjay

It is because the shell expands the *.Z to the list of files which match, basically what you are doing is the same as:

ls -lrt file1.Z file2.Z file3.Z...fileN.Z

so if you have 20,000 .Z files you have supplied ls with 20,000 files in the list.

Thanks Reborg. If I may indulge on this topic further, what controls the number of files that a ls command can work on directly in the ksh environment. Is this a limitation of "ls" command or is it a limitation of the shell not being able to expand *.Z into the 20,000 file names? If this is a limitation on the shell environment where and how is the limit set?

Jerardfjay