Excessive memory consumption with multiple modified files in CLI

[homm]

$ /usr/bin/time -v dssim ./art.png ./speed8/art_q30_118971.png
0.02005356	./speed8/art_q30_118971.png
	User time (seconds): 1.37
	Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 396972

$ /usr/bin/time -v dssim ./art.png ./speed8/art_q3{0,1,2,3}_*.png
0.02005356	./speed8/art_q30_118971.png
0.01835660	./speed8/art_q31_130632.png
0.01720346	./speed8/art_q32_140795.png
0.01625887	./speed8/art_q33_148772.png
	User time (seconds): 3.56
	Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 687496

$ /usr/bin/time -v dssim ./art.png ./speed8/art_*.png
Command terminated by signal 9
	User time (seconds): 17.01
	Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 1836224

As command is terminated before starting any output, I suppose it tries to load the whole set in memory before any analyzing.

[kornelski]

It does indeed try to load them all at once. As a workaround you can use xargs -n.