Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caesar.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpfcso!hpfcdc!rer
From: rer@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Rob Robason)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: cp gives poor error message (so what else is new?)
Message-ID: <5570347@hpfcdc.HP.COM>
Date: 13 Dec 89 22:48:30 GMT
References: <210038@speclab.bgp-usgs.gov>
Organization: HP Ft. Collins, Co.
Lines: 12

# DRIFTING A BIT
> 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.

Did the error actually come from cp, or from your shell?  Shells are
limited in the length of arguments they can expand to something like
10KB (some much less) and complain in situations like the one you
describe.

Rob Robason