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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!lll-winken.llnl.gov!uwm.edu!news.moneng.mei.com!news.inc.net!news.sprintlink.net!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk!lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk!gi101 From: gi101@cus.cam.ac.uk (G. Ioannou) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: xargs and ARG_MAX Date: 13 Sep 1995 19:05:42 GMT Organization: University of Cambridge, England Lines: 21 Message-ID: <437a26$bg3@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> Reply-To: gi101@cam.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk Summary: What is ARG_MAX? Keywords: xargs argument ARG_MAX From the xargs(1) source code, xargs.c: * POSIX.2 limits the exec line length to ARG_MAX - 2K. Running that * caused some E2BIG errors, so it was changed to ARG_MAX - 4K. Given * that the smallest argument is 2 bytes in length, this means that * the number of arguments is limited to: * * (ARG_MAX - 4K - LENGTH(utility + arguments)) / 2. * * We arbitrarily limit the number of arguments to 5000. This is * allowed by POSIX.2 as long as the resulting minimum exec line is * at least LINE_MAX. Realloc'ing as necessary is possible, but * probably not worthwhile. Something similar to this is also stated in the manpage. My question is this: what is ARG_MAX, and therefore, what is the maximum command line length in FreeBSD? Thanx. George.