Thank you (for making the ports less boring).

Christoph Moench-Tegeder cmt at burggraben.net
Wed Sep 14 08:29:05 UTC 2011


## perryh at pluto.rain.com (perryh at pluto.rain.com):

> > I notice "/bin/echo */*/Makefile*" doesn't work.
> 
> The same (builtin echo works, /bin/echo not) happens in /bin/sh,
> and in bash.
> 
> > Is this documented somewhere?
> 
> Not that I know of.

There is a limit to the length of arguments to the exec()-functions
(measured in bytes). It's even in POSIX.1: ARG_MAX, you can query it
with "getconf ARG_MAX". When using shell builtins (like echo, instead
of the "external" /bin/echo), no exec() happens and the limit does
not apply.
If I got my history right, this was even in 4.4BSD.

Regards,
Christoph

-- 
Spare Space.


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