/bin/tar: Argument list too long

gistfile1.txt

@url https://major.io/2007/07/05/bintar-argument-list-too-long/

If you find yourself stuck with over 30,000 files in a directory (text files in this example), packing them into a tar file can be tricky.
Largest number of files completed 507,000 files of 355bytes each 
NOTE:  This will tap out all your servers resources and find the weak link; so be careful. CPU or Disk I/O? 

You can get around it with this:

find . -name '*.txt' -print >/tmp/test.manifest
tar -cvzf textfiles.tar.gz --files-from /tmp/test.manifest
find . -name '*.txt' | xargs rm -v


# remove files all in one go ( have not tested which is faster)
find . -name '*.txt' -print >/tmp/test.manifest
tar -cvzf textfiles.tar.gz --files-from /tmp/test.manifest --remove-files