On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, Ray Lai wrote:
> What are the proper uses of MAXNAMLEN, NAME_MAX, and FILENAME_MAX?
> Do they represent filenames with or without paths? Do they include
> the terminating null or not? The source seems inconsistent:
Posix says: "{NAME_MAX} Maximum number of bytes in a filename (not
including terminating null). Minimum Acceptable Value:
{_POSIX_NAME_MAX}"
The other two are non-posix:
MAXNAMLEN is file name length, not a path, excluding the NUL byte.
FILENAME_MAX is from ANSI C, in practise it's value is equal to the
posix PATH_MAX, which is the maximum length of a path name _including_
NUL.
In practice, a lot of unix programs use MAXPATHLEN, which is in
general equal to the posix PATH_MAX.
-Otto
