🚀 go-pugleaf

Submitted-by: karish@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Chuck Karish)

In article <1gs9qaINN9rl@ftp.UU.NET> eric@mks.com (Eric Gisin) writes:
>On a system with a defined, constant value for PATH_MAX,
>what would pathconf("/tmp", _PC_PATH_MAX) return?
>The books I have, Zlotnick and O'Reilly, say PATH_MAX-4.
>The systems I have say PATH_MAX.
>Who is right? If it is PATH_MAX-4, how would fpathconf work?

POSIX.1-1990 says, in note (5) to Table 5-2 (5.7.1.3):

    If path or fildes refers to a directory, the value
    returned is the maximum length of a relative pathname
    when the specified directory is the working directory.

However, the description of the values in Table 2-6,
which includes PATH_MAX, (2.8.5) says:

    The values in Table 2-6 may be constants within an
    implementation or may vary from one pathname to
    another.

The implementation described above chooses to have
{PATH_MAX} constant rather than variable according to
the length of the path prefix.  This is legitimate.

Another interesting question is whether the fixed value
of PATH_MAX accurately reflects the capabilities of
the filesystem.
--

    Chuck Karish          karish@mindcraft.com
    (415) 323-9000 x117   karish@pangea.stanford.edu


Volume-Number: Volume 29, Number 83