Re: Fw: File name too long problem -- maybe fix coming?

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin at cygwin dot com>]

On Jan  9 06:53, Eric Blake wrote:
> According to Corinna Vinschen on 1/9/2008 5:44 AM:
>> Actually, for a couple of weeks I'm already wondering if we shouldn't
>> better set PATH_MAX to 32000 or even a smaller value like 16384.  That's
>> still a darn long path and it's much more safe to handle.
>
> If we follow Linux' lead, then set PATH_MAX to the largest sequence we are 
> willing to handle at once (even 4096 would be fine by me) in the arguments 
> given to most syscalls, provided that we also support the ability to access 
> files with longer names by using relative paths that fit within PATH_MAX 
> (for example, with the addition of *at functions).

Apart from that, you are suggesting to differ consequently between the
externaly handled POSIX path length as defined by PATH_MAX, and the
internal max path length which would be something along the lines of
32K for obvious reasons, right?

That sounds like an interesting idea.  Maybe we should really just
restrict PATH_MAX to 4K as on Linux.  "Nobody will ever need more than
4K bytes long pathnames"(C).

>   Then only a few special 
> functions will have to support strings longer than PATH_MAX (for example, 
> the Austin Group is adding requirements to getcwd in the next revision of 
> POSIX that makes it always accurate, even if the current directory has an 
> absolute path longer than PATH_MAX, because it was reached in stages 
> through relative directories).

Ok, returning arbitrary strings in buffers provided by the application
shouldn't be a problem anyway.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Project Co-Leader          cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat