limits

Moderator, John Quarterman std-unix at ut-sally.UUCP
Wed Nov 20 09:45:13 AEST 1985


Date: Mon, 18 Nov 85 13:28:03 cst
From: ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!preece at SEISMO.CSS.GOV (Scott Preece)

> From: Dan Franklin <dan at BBN-PROPHET.ARPA>
> Instead of one system call which returns *everything*, there should be
> one system call which takes a numeric index "naming" the limit to be
> returned.  An index of 0 would return the total number of limits.
> Limits.h would give the indices.
----------
I'd get rid of the numeric constants part of that, too.  Use a call
like getenv, supplying a name as an Ascii string.

But does this mean we would have to malloc space for anything that
was sized to a system limit (i.e., one could no longer say
	char buf[PATH_MAX]
but would have to do:
	char *buf;
	long bufsize;
	...
	bufsize = getlimit("PATH_MAX");
	if (bufsize >= 0)
		buf = (char *)malloc(bufsize);
	else
		perror("bufalloc:");
at run time?

Nobody ever said programming had to be easy, but this could
get old pretty quickly...

[ If the limits are taken from <limits.h>, presumably a program could,
if the programmer so chose, #include that file and size arrays at
compile time.  -mod ]

__
scott preece
gould/csd urbana
ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!preece

Volume-Number: Volume 3, Number 28



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