They always say computers are so good with numbers, but you can鈥檛 even store 2000 numbers in a single file!!

Try it out for yourself:

seq 1 2000 | tr '\n' ' '
cat > /tmp/wat.txt
<copy&paste the 2000 numbers from above, press enter, then ctrl+d to end input>
cat /tmp/wat.txt
wc /tmp/wat.txt

Or see my screencast here: asciinema.org/a/fLhMt640MqFWGu

On a Mac, I can save even fewer numbers! But at least I get feedback that the line is full. How many numbers can your computer save?

Michael Stapelberg 馃惂馃惞馃樅

@zekjur@mas.to

Tested with URxvt, GNOME console and foot on Linux, Terminal.app and Ghostty on Mac.

February 26, 2026 at 8:31:00 PM
Web

can confirm this for kitty too.

Interesting! That 4096 is a suspiciously round number. Wonder if this is telling us that stdin works with a page size of 4K, and cat > $filename somehow only reads one of the pages?

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