Lenny Foner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:46:13 -0400 (EDT)
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Larry Jones)
>
> Derek R. Price writes:
> >
> > I'm thinking maybe the standard test comes close to the argument length
> > limit and something about your system pushes it over the edge.
>
> On many systems, the environment counts against the maximum argument
> length limit; if you've got a lot of enviroment variables or some with
> very long definitions, try deleting them before running the tests. (You
> may find env -i [some versions use - instead of -i] to be a handy way to
> do that.)
>
> Ah ha! This is -exactly- what the problem was. I have somewhat over
> 300 environment variables (printenv returns about 11K bytes), since I
> often point at useful parts of the filesystem with them. (Do aliases
> count as well? What else? Why isn't this -documented- anywhere? Why
> in the world is it -true-? Even in GNU products? Unheard-of!)
>From the Unix98 standard:-
The number of bytes available for the new process' combined
argument and environment lists is {ARG_MAX}. It is
implementation-dependent whether null terminators, pointers,
and/or any alignment bytes are included in this total.
--
James Youngman
Manchester, UK. +44 161 226 7339
PGP (GPG) key ID for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is 64A95EE5 (F1B83152).
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