John Almberg wrote:
I seem to have run into an odd problem...A client has a directory with a big-ish number of jpgs... maybe 4000. Problem is, I can only see 2329 of them with ls, and I'm running into other problems, I think.Question: Is there some limit to the number of files that a directory can contain? Or rather, is there some number where things like ls start working incorrectly?
There's a limit to the number of arguments the shell will deal with
for one command. So if you type:
% ls -lh *
(meaning the shell expands '*' to a list of filenames), you'll run into
that limitation. However, if you type
% ls -lh
and let ls(1) read the directory contents itself, it should cope
with 4000 items easily. [It might slow down because of sorting the
results, but for only 4000 items that's probably not significant]
Now, if your problem is that these 4000 jpegs are mixed up with other
files and you only want to list the jpeg files, then you could do
something like this:
% find . -name '*.jpeg' -print0 | xargs -0 ls -lh
or even just:
% find . -name '*.jpg' -ls
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard
Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
Kent, CT11 9PW
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