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Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 13:24:04 -0800
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@transmeta.com>
Organization: Transmeta Corporation
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To: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>
CC: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>, Bill Crawford <billc@netcomuk.co.uk>,
        Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Daniel Phillips <phillips@innominate.de>
Subject: Re: Hashing and directories
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Alexander Viro wrote:
> 
> I _really_ don't want to trust the ability of shell to deal with long
> command lines. I also don't like the failure modes with history expansion
> causing OOM, etc.
> 
> AFAICS right now we hit the kernel limit first, but I really doubt that
> raising said limit is a good idea.
> 

Arbitrary limits are generally bad.  Yes, using a very long command line
is usually a bad idea, but there are cases for which it is the only
reasonable way to do something.  Categorically blocking them is not a
good idea either.

> xargs is there for purpose...

Well, yes; using xargs is a good idea, not the least because it enables
some parallelism that wouldn't otherwise be there.

	-hpa

-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt
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