The xargs program shipped with my Debian GNU/Linux system knows about the command line length limitation, and automatically wraps too long command lines into muliple programs. You can see the length limits easily: 

$ xargs --show-limits
Your environment variables take up 2038 bytes
POSIX upper limit on argument length (this system): 2093066
POSIX smallest allowable upper limit on argument length (all systems):
+ 4096
Maximum length of command we could actually use: 2091028
Size of command buffer we are actually using: 131072

[download]

And to show that it does not produce an error, I create a command line that's 20 times that limit: 

$ yes | head -n 20910280 | xargs /bin/echo > /dev/null
$

[download]
Perl 6 - the future is here, just unevenly distributed

In reply to Re^5: perlbrew: moving to a new perl with all current modules (xargs) by moritz
in thread perlbrew: moving to a new perl with all current modules by zgrim

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