Subject: Re: Any egrep length limit?

From: [email-masked] (Stephen R. van den Berg)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 16:24:58 +0200

s.merchant <[email-masked]> wrote:
>I was "bitten" once in a Shell script because egrep (on 2 different
>Unix machines) has an unadvertised 128-character limit on the match
>pattern (at least as compiled on those machines).  Anyway, my question
>is:  Does procmail's internal egrep have such a limit and, if so, what
>is it?  If so, does one count this limit before or after expansion of
>the ^TO/^FROM_DAEMON/^FROM_MAILER pseudo-expressions?

The *only* procmail imposed limit is that of LINEBUF.  Variable
assignments, actions, conditions: they all have to be smaller than
$LINEBUF characters (before *and* after expansion).

The egrep engine as such does not impose any additional limits.
The MATCH can even exceed $LINEBUF in length, as long as you don't
try to expand $MATCH in a procmail-internal command (e.g. you could expand
it in a subshell).

-- 
Sincerely,                                  [email-masked]
           Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless).

"<Clarions sounding> *No one* expects the Spanish inquisition!"