Copying files in UNIX

first, why are you having to copy as su?
insanely high risk, you can copy without the su, as long as copying to a directory that doesn't need su priveledges to write.

with 1200 files in original directoy, the script is passing 1200 arguments to the command cp

see if you can edit the csh config to increase argument capability from scripts. might be built in
to csh to limit argument from scripts as a security measure.
I use bash myself, and haven't had this error show up.

DEALING WITH TOO MANY FILES

In case there are too many files in a
particular directory and you try doing

$ grep "ABC" *

And it fails saying
ksh: /usr/bin/find: 0403-027 The parameter list is too long.

what would you do?

Well you can do the following:

$ls |xargs grep "ABC"

The same approach could be taken when attemptung to copy files.

Under AIX you can use the getconf ARG_MAX to find out how many arguments can be passed to any command.
Under AIx 5.2 it is set to 24576.

I hope this is helpful

I answered this question before from you, and you accepted it:

https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-6239-0.html?forumID=37&threadID=166396&start0

Anyway, never hardcode the root password in a shell script! Obvious security risk!

Gary

cd fromdir; tar cf - . | (cd todir; tar xfBp -)
or
cp -rp from_dir to_dir
That way, you will keep the owner, file perm & group....

You can also use the find command, which, like the above example using "xargs" will parse the directory tryy one file at a time and avoid the "arg" limit of the shell:

use something similar to:

find ./Folder1/* -exec cp {} ./Folder2/ \;

-cheers

try this
cd ./folder1
ls >listfile
while read -r file
do
cp $file ../folder2
done < listfile

This question was closed by the author