list limit for IN predicate?

Does anyone know what the maximum number of items there can be in a list
for the IN predicate. I have a maintenance script that extracts
information from one dB, builds a list for the IN predicate, connects to
a different dB, and runs a query based on the list generated. In one
instance the list that was built had ~450 items in the list, which
crashed the server.

Is it a matter of the size of the list in characters and not items in
the list? The whole list, including the quotes around the items in the
list, commas, etc. was ~5k characters.

Thanks

Dennis

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