Actually there is a maximum line length for most of the line-oriented utilities (awk, sed, grep ...) which applies to the shell too (at least to all shells of my knowledge). This is a system constant and can be found in /usr/include/limits.h.
LINE_MAX
Unless otherwise noted, the maximum length, in bytes, of a utility's input line (either standard input or another file), when the utility is described as processing text files. The length includes room for the trailing newline. Minimum Acceptable Value: _POSIX2_LINE_MAX
There might be other limits, which can be found in this file too:
Quote:
ARG_MAX
Maximum length of argument to the exec functions including environment data. Minimum Acceptable Value: _POSIX_ARG_MAX
Quote:
MAX_INPUT
Minimum number of bytes for which space will be available in a terminal input queue; therefore, the maximum number of bytes a portable application may require to be typed as input before reading them. Minimum Acceptable Value: _POSIX_MAX_INPUT
The minimum of these three values will determine the actual upper bound for the length of your input line.
In fact some 15 years ago, when these values were considerably smaller on average, it was possible to break some seemingly working shell-code like this:
by executing it for a directory with enough entries. Given good enough (=bad enough) circumstances this will lead to the "input line too long" error if the file names add up to the critical amount of characters. To avoid this risk altogether it is advisable to write it this way:
good friends days
I would love to know if I can help you know the length of a string
example:
cadena= "cual es mi largo"
echo "cadena : $cadena#
cadena :16 (7 Replies)
How can I change the maximum length of a programming line in fortran and C (specifically in fortran 77)?
Seems the default maximum length is 72 in fortran 77.
Thanks. (4 Replies)
Hi,
I wanted to know what is the maximum length of command which can be run on a bourne (sh) shell? Where can I find that information? Is it different for different OS flavors?
Please help.
Thanks,
Vineet (10 Replies)
Hi,
I need to create a file of record length more than 300 characters.
But in my unix box, i am able to create a file only with a maximum of 256 characters per record.
Is there anyway i can create a file with more than 300 characters in this case?
Or How to increase the maximum record... (1 Reply)
hi,
I am using solaris10. I have to write a bourne shell script, which copies files for the said destination path which is passed as an argument to the script.
it looks like this
myscript.sh /var/test -->destination path
now i would like to know what is the maximum length i can... (3 Replies)
Hi All,
I didn't find any thread that match this question so I hope it's not redundant. I am totally new to Unix. I want to know what is the maximum length of the os-commandline in Unix. Will it cause any problem if I run any application whose total path length is much longer than 256... (2 Replies)