Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: tar frustration
Message-ID: <8340@smoke.ARPA>
Date: 14 Aug 88 10:11:04 GMT
References: <1670003@hpcilzb.HP.COM< <5762@super.upenn.edu< <1414@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu< <2858@ttrdc.UUCP< <7056@conexch.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) )
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <7056@conexch.UUCP> root@conexch.UUCP (Larry Dighera) writes:
>This is so simple that it makes me feel like I don't understand the problem.

That's right...

>	tar cvf /dev/whatever `cat file_of_names`

There is a fairly small limit to the total number of bytes available
for the arguments to a command; something like 4096 to 10240 bytes.
It would be very easy to exceed this when archiving a large tree.