bugtraq - Re: Changes to the filesystem while find is running

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Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 19:30:26 +0100
From: <Casper.Dik@....COM>
To: <kbo@....tiscali.de>
Cc: srevilak@...akeasy.net, James Youngman <bugtraq@...ession.spiral-arm.org>,
	parimiv@...haw.com, levon@...ementarian.org,
	bugtraq@...urityfocus.com, bug-findutils@....org
Subject: Re: Changes to the filesystem while find is running - comments?



>I am genuinely surprised that Solaris still has such a
>relatively small PATH_MAX.  Linux has 4096.

Really, there are things you cannot change because of
binary compatibility.  PATH_MAX is one.

Having a 4K path seems rather pointless; the longest path on my
system is 225 bytes; a factor of 4 over that borders on the ridiculous.

>Like other arbitrary system limits of its ilk, PATH_MAX
>is evil, and is one of the more persuasive arguments for
>getting rid of the C language and its fixed-size
>stack-allocated buffers.
>

>char path[PATH_MAX];  /* considered harmful */

Evil, yes, but old source code never dies.

Casper