diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 61c48a1..a367751 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ Bowtie NEWS
 
    Bowtie is now available for download.  0.9.0 is the first version to
 be released under the OSI Artistic License (see `COPYING') and freely
-available to the public for download.  The current version is 0.12.9.
+available to the public for download.  The current version is 0.12.10.
 
 Reporting Issues
 ================
@@ -26,6 +26,11 @@ subscribe to our mailing list:
 Version Release History
 =======================
 
+Version 0.12.10 - Coming soon
+   * Tokenizer no longer has limit of 10,000 tokens, which was a
+     problem for users trying to index a very large number of FASTA
+     files.
+
 Version 0.12.9 - December 14, 2012
    * Fixed a bug whereby read names would not be truncated at first
      whitespace character in unmapped or maxed-out SAM records.
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
index e829fc1..81d30f8 100644
--- a/VERSION
+++ b/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-0.12.9
\ No newline at end of file
+0.12.10-dev1
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/tokenize.h b/tokenize.h
index 605dd9f..9951bf2 100644
--- a/tokenize.h
+++ b/tokenize.h
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@
 #include <string>
 #include <sstream>
 #include <vector>
+#include <limits>
 
 using namespace std;
 
@@ -18,10 +19,11 @@ using namespace std;
  * Split string s according to given delimiters.  Mostly borrowed
  * from C++ Programming HOWTO 7.3.
  */
-static inline void tokenize(const string& s,
-                            const string& delims,
-                            vector<string>& ss,
-                            size_t max = 9999)
+static inline void tokenize(
+	const string& s,
+	const string& delims,
+	vector<string>& ss,
+	size_t max = std::numeric_limits<size_t>::max())
 {
 	string::size_type lastPos = s.find_first_not_of(delims, 0);
 	string::size_type pos = s.find_first_of(delims, lastPos);