An error at the commandline with the Linux shell (e.g. Dash), most notably using:

• find

• rm

\cp  /path/to/files/*  .

bash: //bin/cp: Argument list too long

\find  /path/to/files/  -type f  -name '*'  -exec  \cp  -x {}  .  \;

bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long

for i in `\ls  /path/to/files/*`; do  \cp  "$i"  .  ; done

bash: //bin/ls: Argument list too long

cd /path/to/source/
for i in  `\ls  -c1`; do  \cp  "$1"  /path/to/dest/  ; done

cp: cannot stat `': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `': No such file or directory

# Deals with filenames that have spaces, etc.  It uses NULL seperation rather than space seperation.
\find  /path/to/files/*  -print0  |  \xargs  -0  \cp  {}  /path/to/dest/  \;

bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long

ARGH!

Just use Midnight Commander

Some other solutions nobody could guess at:

# To leave the contents of subdirectories alone:
\find  .  -maxdepth 1  -print0  |  \xargs  -0  \rm  -f

\xargs  \rm < <(ls .)

# printf is a bash builtin
\printf  "%s\n"  *  |  \xargs  \rm

other notes ∞

Some people recommend using Ruby or Ruby’s irb.

• Dealing with Too Many Arguments