Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751365AbZL2Tfn (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:35:43 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751235AbZL2Tfm (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:35:42 -0500 Received: from toccata.ens-lyon.fr ([140.77.166.68]:48383 "EHLO toccata.ens-lyon.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751051AbZL2Tfl (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:35:41 -0500 X-Greylist: delayed 429 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:35:40 EST Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:28:27 +0100 From: Samuel Thibault To: "Robert P. J. Day" Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: what's the purpose of MAXHOSTNAMELEN? Message-ID: <20091229192827.GF4815@const> Mail-Followup-To: Samuel Thibault , "Robert P. J. Day" , Linux Kernel Mailing List References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.12-2006-07-14 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1105 Lines: 24 Robert P. J. Day, le Tue 29 Dec 2009 14:19:30 -0500, a ?crit : > so lots of people define it but no one uses it. it *is* exported to > user space in /usr/include/asm/param.h, but i still have no idea what > it's for in user space. obsolete? It's like all these *MAX* #defines: they are a bad way to express the system limitations. They are bad because they end up compiled-in, but also because people understand them as "a typical allocation length" and get lazy. The typical example is PATH_MAX, which is #defined to 4096. A _lot_ of applications thus keep allocating 4KB for all paths. See http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/porting/guidelines.html#PATH_MAX_tt_MAX_PATH_tt_MAXPATHL If you could drop it (would be completely POSIX-compliant), that'd be a great service to GNU/Hurd porters, but I bet you'll also get a lot of angry people. Samuel -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/