Re: ls

[Bob Proulx]

Embacher Markus wrote:
> 
> ls *
> then I receive the following error message:
> bash: /usr/bin/ls: Invalid argument

David T-G wrote:
> 
> One of the files in the directory probably starts with '-' and the
[...lots of good suggestions...]

Hmm...  That was a good guess at the problem.  I read the responses
and it provided some useful data.

But the message that we see here is "Invalid argument" and it is
coming from 'bash' and not from 'ls'.  Therefore it cannot be a bad
option to 'ls' since it has not been able to run yet.  The shell is
giving the error because of a problem trying to run the command.  What
would cause the shell to give an error such as that?

I can't guess further without more details.  What does this say?

  echo * >/dev/null

I am wondering if the ARG_MAX problem that David mentioned earlier
might still be present here.  If that says nothing, then it is not a
problem in this context.  But it might give an error.  The echo
command is a shell builtin and so eliminates problems invoking
external commands.

What exactly is the ls command?  Could it be an alias that is
confusing us?

  type ls

  file /usr/bin/ls

  ls -l /usr/bin/ls

The invalid argument is really throwing me.  So lastly some random
things that might point out the problem but I really can't say that I
am targeting them specifically.

  ls --version

  uname -a

  get_conf ARG_MAX

  /bin/true *

  echo * | fmt | head

Bob