ksh limits on Alpha?

[Chad Price <cprice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've got a program which needs to provide a comparison value for 
95+94+...+1 data sets, and each comparison value comes out of another 
program as a single file. Thus I'm creating large numbers of files as 
output and running it under ksh.

The process: I provide a file of file names (DNA sequences). My 
home-written program reads the file of sequences, and then creates a shell 
script which calls other programs to compare each sequence against every 
other sequence. Each comparison creates a new output file (and this cannot 
be changed - I have no source for the comparison program.)

It's clear that 'ls' alone has no problem with just listing all the files, 
but as soon as I use a wildcard to pick and choose among the output, I get 
error messages about too many files.

So: does anyone know what the limits are?  How many files? (it seems to be 
larger than 2900 and smaller that 8100?) I can rewrite the part of the 
analysis I do in order to create subdirectories for each X files, if I know 
what value I should use for X.

Chad

Chad Price
Systems Manager, Genetic Sequence Analysis Facility
University of Nebraska Medical Center
986495 Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha, NE 68506-6495
cprice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(402) 559-9527
(402) 559-4077 (FAX)