From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Le Wang" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: 'grep' + long list of files Date: 29 Jun 2006 00:15:51 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1151565351.469406.140210@d56g2000cwd.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1151566869 1684 80.91.229.2 (29 Jun 2006 07:41:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:41:09 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jun 29 09:41:04 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Fvr8e-00050T-Ba for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 29 Jun 2006 09:40:36 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Fvr8d-0005Li-NC for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 29 Jun 2006 03:40:35 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!d56g2000cwd.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 33 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.19.59.244 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1151565356 19664 127.0.0.1 (29 Jun 2006 07:15:56 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:15:56 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: G2/0.2 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: d56g2000cwd.googlegroups.com; posting-host=24.19.59.244; posting-account=j4OimgwAAAALo-2szSZvOyX5OE1uyIeS Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:140094 Original-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:35718 Archived-At: Hi, I have a variable which holds a list of files, and I need to grep through them for some expression. The problem is that the command with the full list of files becomes longer than the maximum allowed on my OS (Windows). I've thought of some possible solutions. 1. Save list to temp file, use "xargs". This is not ideal. I don't want to fumble with with temporary files. BUT this is easy to implement with a minimal lisp code and a shell/perl script. 2. Make several smaller lists, run grep on each, and merge the output. Again, this is hacky and not ideal. And I can't see how to do this from looking at compile.el. 3. Get Emacs to pipe the list into xargs as a string. This is the preferred solution, but it's not immediately clear to me how to do this in conjunction with compilation mode. I can't get xargs to recognize ^@ (read as null, but I can't type it into this browser windos) as a separator while running in Emacs. I already build this list for completion purposes, so grep-find doesn't apply here. Is There is an obvious solution I'm just not seeing? Thanks. -- Le