Re: GNU Parallel - Error:Argument list too long

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Samdani A.,

On Mon, 16 Jan 2017 16:57:47 +0530
Samdani A <samdani1593@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> I used GNU parallel to process 144766 files using 8 jobs run in parallel.
> But the following error arising on starting the process.
> 
> parallel -j 8 "do something" ::: *.txt
> bash: /usr/local/bin/parallel: Argument list too long
> 
> Can anyone tell the maximum input files which can be given for input to run
> in GNU parallel? or anyother way to process these many number of files?
> 

This is a limitation of Unix - see
https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-pike-responds . You
can overcome it by passing the filenames using standard input, e.g:

ls | grep -vE '\.txt$' | [parallel here]


> 
> Thanks and Regards
> Samdani.A



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