Argument list too long - Unix

Question

This scripts will sort the files by date then move the first 2500 files to another directory.
When I run below scripts, system prompt out Argument list too long msg. Any

Answer 1

Change

ls -tr  $FROM_DIRECTORY/MSCERC*.Z|head -2500 | \
    xargs -i sh -c "mv {} $DESTINATION_DIRECTORY"  

do something like the following:

find "$FROM_DIRECTORY" -maxdepth 1 -type f -name 'MSCERC*.Z' -printf '%p\t%T@\n' | sort -k2,2 -r | cut -f1 | head -$NUM_OF_FILES | xargs mv -t "$DESTINATION_DIRECTORY"

This uses find to create a list of files with modification timestamps, sorts by the timestamp, then removes the unneeded field before passing the output to head and xargs

EDIT

Another variant, should work with non GNU utils

find "$FROM_DIRECTORY" -type f -name 'MSCERC*.Z' -printf '%p\t%T@' |sort -k 2,2 -r | cut -f1 | head -$NUM_OF_FILES | xargs -i mv \{\} "$DESTINATION_DIRECTORY"