Re: Numerically sorted arguments (in shell)

On 18.06.2024 17:19, Chris Elvidge wrote:

On 18/06/2024 at 15:38, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

[...]

One thing that concerns me with arrays is that I seem to recall that
there was a limit in the number of array elements (which might be an
issue on lengthy lists of files). But some ad hoc tests seem to show
that if there's a limit it's not any more in the 1k/4k elements range
as it had been. (Bolski/Korn says their arrays support at least 4k.)

 
I tested in ksh - works as written.
 
From here:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/195191/ksh-bash-maximum-size-of-an-array
 
 
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This simple script shows on my systems (Gnu/Linux and Solaris):
 
    ksh88 limits the size to 2^12-1 (4095). (subscript out of range ).
Some older releases like the one on HP-UX limit the size to 1023.

Yeah, I recall these limits from ksh88 on AIX and HP-UX.

 
    ksh93 limits the size of a array to 2^22-1 (4194303), your mileage
may vary.

I've tried on my system just with a million names (yet more
filenames than we want to have in our directories in one place).

 
    bash doesn't look to impose any hard-coded limit outside the one
dictated by the underlying memory resources available. For example bash
uses 1.3 GB of virtual memory for an array size of 18074340.

I didn't notice a limit for my old Bash or Ksh on my system.

So your array approach looks promising for one numeric key, and
it's a nice and terse solution.

Janis

 
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