help2002

It's UWAweek 30 (2nd semester, week 1)

help2002

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UWA week 40 (2nd semester, week 10) ↓

2nd project PATH_MAX, MAXPATHLEN, limits.h and sys/param.h (both)

5:49am Thu 5th Oct, Christopher M.

"Lewei Xu" <23*0*0*8@s*u*e*t*u*a*e*u*a*> wrote:

> ... haha ...

> Before I read the post titled Macro Definitions, I was searching up the maximum path names in Linux systems. I stumbled across MAX_PATH which is defined in <limits.h> which is defined to be 4096 bytes. However, for MAX_PATH to be defined, I also had to use #define _POSIX_C_SOURCE 200809L. > > I also found that MAX_PATH was defined in <sys/param.h> and is the same number as MAXPATHLEN. Just a bit confused about what all these are, and the differences between them.

I believe that the reason for 2 such similar constants is their historic origins - MAXPATHLEN originally from the Unix world, and MAX_PATH from the Windows world. I do most of my work on both Linux and macOS, ensuring that my code compiles with minimal reference to its environment. With this, I always just include sys/param.h and use MAXPATHLEN. On Ubuntu 23.04, today, the value is 4096; on macOS 14.0.1 it is 1024.