Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!gorodish!guy
From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: grep replacement (first match only per file)
Message-ID: <56347@sun.uucp>
Date: 13 Jun 88 20:27:09 GMT
References: <16148@brl-adm.ARPA>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Lines: 18

> ? This works, and is indeed faster.  However, it shares one problem with
> ? all of the others: '*' expansion.  As an (uncomfortable) example,
> ? /usr/spool/news/talk/bizarre has over 2500 articles in it at our site,
> ? and the shell can't expand that properly (SunOS 3.4, if it matters).

"Fixed in 4.0", perhaps: from 4.0's "sys/param.h":

#define	NCARGS	0x100000	/* (absolute) max # characters in exec arglist */

(I don't know which versions of the shell can cope with 1MB argument lists, if
any.)

> Don't forget about xargs.

Assuming, of course, that your system has it; SunOS has it in releases 3.2 or
later (if you install the "System V Optional Software"; it's in "/usr/bin"),
but vanilla 4.xBSD doesn't, for example.  I would not be at all surprised to
hear that there is some public-domain reimplementation out there somewhere.