Here's how to reproduce the problem: (printf 'ln ' perl -e 'print "x"x(2**31)' printf ' ' perl -e 'print "x"x(2**30)' printf '\n' ) >bigscript bash bigscript
On my x86-64 host, Bash loops, seemingly forever. I expect it's using a 32-bit integer to keep track of line lengths, somewhere. This bug report was inspired by the following report: http://debbugs.gnu.org/13258 That bug report is against coreutils, but the real bug was in bash, so I'm closing bug 13258 and forwarding this to bug-b...@gnu.org.
