Is there a way to get around the MAX_ARGS in the limits.h file? I'm attempting to do a "word count" and keep getting the message saying the parameter list is too long. Here is an example of the command: ls myfile.* | wc -l. Can the find command or any other command be used to count the number of files in a certain dir with a certain prefix. Thanks for any help. Steve Stack sstack@humana.com

Steve: The problem is you are overflowing the command-line buffer. Typically, the xargs, construct argument lists, command sends only enough arguments so as to not overflow. Check out if this fixes your problem: ls myfile.*|xargs ls |wc -l Regards, nails

The solution is to use "find" not "ls". This method will work for any number of files and is better working practice: find . -name myfile\.\* -print | wc -l The backslash before the "." is to make "find" read the "." as a character not a wildcard. The backslash before the "*" is to stop shell expanding the "*".

I must respectfully disagree with you. You can overflow the command line with find as well as ls. That's the beauty of xargs - it won't. In addition, find searches the directory structure which may or may not be what the original poster wants to do. Regards, Nails