[ILUG] Limits of grep?

[Kenn Humborg]

On Tue, Sep 26, 2000 at 06:38:05AM +0000, Subba Rao wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I have a directory of 10000+ text files and would like to search for
> some strings in these files. When I tried using "grep" command with an
> asterisk, I get the error message somthing to the effect,
> 
> 	"File argument list too long"
> 
> What is the file argument limit for grep? I guess you need the grep source
> for this. I did not find any information in the man page.
> 
> Are there any other recommended tools to search through such large list of
> files?

ls | xargs grep <regex>

See xargs manpage for more info.

Later,
Kenn