Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!pilchuck!pacer!davidb
From: davidb@Pacer.UUCP (David Barts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: cp gives poor error message (so what else is new?)
Summary: It's not cp ...
Message-ID: <261@zircon.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 89 18:12:36 GMT
References: <210038@speclab.bgp-usgs.gov> <210039@speclab.bgp-usgs.gov> <627@mmlai.UUCP>
Organization: Pacer Corp., Bothell, WA
Lines: 18

In article <627@mmlai.UUCP>, burzio@mmlai.UUCP (Tony Burzio) writes:
-> . . .
-> Actually, I would be satisfied with a cp that allows unlimited numbers
-> of files to be passed in.  I had a directory with several hundred files
-> that I wanted to copy, and a (cp * dir) gave me an error that there were
-> too many parameters.  The cp worked on a Sun, which is what I used over
-> the NFS network to make the copy...

Wouldn't help.  It's the shell that expands wildcards, not cp.  The shell
is overflowing the buffer it uses to hold expanded command strings.

The shell you used on the Sun either had a larger buffer or the length
of all file names in . was short enough to fit in the buffer.  Try
`ls | xargs -i cp {} dir'.  It's generally a bad idea to depend on the
shell always being able to expand `*'.
-- 
David Barts			Pacer Corporation
davidb@pacer.uucp		...!fluke!pacer!davidb