Bugtraq: Re: Changes to the filesystem while find is running - comments?

[Casper.Dik () Sun COM]

> 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