note 60212 deleted from language.operators.execution by salathe

Note Submitter: cs at kainaw dot com ---- After much trouble, I have concluded that the backtick operator (and shell_exec) have a limited buffer for the return. My problem was that I was grepping a file with over 500,000 lines, receiving a response with well over 100,000 lines. After a short pause, I was flooded with errors from grep about the pipe being closed. I have searched, but I cannot find the exact size of the buffer used by the backtick operator and shell_exec. So, to avoid this error, you must limit the output of your commands (such as using -m with grep). Through trial and error, you can get the command to run without error.