Maximum STRING length

[bluevw]

Hi all, Can someone tell me what the maximum amount of characters I can write with a single string command into a text file?

[cooper]

I'd say as much as the filesystem can retain in a single file, but it kinda depends on where the characters come from.

UNIX

while true; do echo "a" >> file ; done

WINDOWS

for /L %%n in (1,0,10) do ( echo "a" >> file )

To clarify that for loop, we're looping from 1 to 10 with an increment of 0, meaning an endless loop. Note that it may be VERY hard to break this loop, I haven't tried it myself but I've seen warnings.

If you want it to happen FAST then instead of appending a single character, append the contents of the file to itself using cat(UNIX) or type(WINDOWS). Has to be in a loop still, but you'll quickly only be limited by the speed the disk can write the data to the file.

Edited March 17, 2016 by cooper

[i8igmac]

I would think a string exist in ram. When ram is maxed out then you will discover the break point...

BUFF=""

100,000,000.times do |x|

BUFF<<x

Puts BUFF.size

# puts the buff size

# buffer will grow by one, until the buffer is maxed out.

End

[bluevw]

Thanks! I must be thinking about the string/payload issue wrong.