Argument list too long with just 5000 files

Question

I have a folder with 5000 files that I want to copy somewhere else.

When I do cp ../folder* ., I get the following error:

-bash: /bin/cp: Argument list too long

However, getconf ARG_MAX returns 262144.

$ echo ../folder* |wc
1 5015 69144

Is this normal? I had been able to copy all those files before.

Answer 1

Use a program to iterate over the arguments:

e.g. find .. -type d -iname '*/folder*' -exec cp -a {} . \;

of manually iterate with a loop, such as:

for myDir in ../folder* ; do cp -a "$myDir" . ; done

There are many other ways, but one of the above should do the trick for you. (The for-loop example might be slower)