Globbing (was Re: HAMMER update 10-Feb-2008)

[Oliver Fromme]

Dave Hayes wrote:
 > Simon Schubert writes:
 > > I don't see ANY reason why to increase it.  There is simply NO POINT in
 > > doing so.  It will ALWAYS be a limit.  Limit keeps being limit, thus no
 > > change in limit necessary, as it doesn't change the situation.  QED.

I agree with Simon.

 > Granted, "echo * | xargs" is easier on the argument buffer. Personally,
 > since I use MH for my mail, I'd rather do "grep foo *" than "echo * |
 > grep foo" on the folder containing spam to fish out what I'm looking
 > for.

For interactive work at the shell prompt it's not a big
deal.  You can use "rm *" or "grep foo *" or whatever,
and if the expansion exceeds the argument size limit,
you'll notice that immediately, so you know you have to
use xargs or a different method.

The problem is rather shell scripts.

 > Why not, in fine UNIX tradition, make a sysctl tunable for 
 > the argument space, and make the default what we have now? 

I don't see any advantage.

And there's clearly a disadvantage:  People will increase
the limit to "fix" their broken scripts and Makefiles.
Or even worse, they will write scripts that are broken
from the start, and they won't even notice.

In fact it wouldn't be a bad idea to _lower_ the limit,
so people become aware of the bugs and have an incentive
to really fix their scripts.

Best regards
   Oliver
   
PS:  No, that last suggestion wasn't meant to be serious.

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Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M.
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