python 2.7.12 on Linux behaving differently than on Windows

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thursday 08 December 2016 11:34, BartC wrote:

> On 07/12/2016 23:35, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
>> On Thu, 8 Dec 2016 02:19 am, BartC wrote:
>>
>>> On 07/12/2016 14:34, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
>> [...]
>>>> I don't know why you are so hung up over the number of characters here,
>>>> or this bogeyman of "one million files" in a directory.
>>>
>>> Because /you/ brought it up as a reason why 'globbing' would help when
>>> there are command limits?
>>
>> I did?
>>
>> I don't remember saying any such thing. Citation required.
> 
> In the part you snipped:
> 
> On 07/12/2016 05:15, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>  > On Wednesday 07 December 2016 12:55, BartC wrote:
>  >
>  >> But even Linux's 128KB will fill [fail?] if someone wanted a command
> line that
>  >> listed 20,000 files individually. But it would be spectacularly bad use
>  >> of a command line interface which was designed for humans.
>  >
>  > That's EXACTLY the point of having the shell do globbing.

Right. I meant that rather than have to list 20,000 files by hand, which would 
be a "spectacularly bad use of a command line interface", I can use globbing.

I think in this particular question we're just responding to different things. 
I didn't mean that globbing was a solution to the limits of command line 
length. I meant it was a solution to the poor command line interface (i.e. 
expecting the user to write out all 20,000 files by hand).

In fact, I think I was the first person to mention the command line limits, and 
linked to a page that discussed them in detail.

(The "Too Many Arguments" limit that people occasionally run into isn't a shell 
limitation, but the Unix exec command limit.)



-- 
Steven
"Ever since I learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing 
it everywhere." - Jon Ronson