Home/ Questions/Q 194071
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-11T16:33:50+00:00

If I want to allocate a char array (in C) that is guaranteed to

  • 0

If I want to allocate a char array (in C) that is guaranteed to be large enough to hold any valid absolute path+filename, how big does it need to be.

On Win32, there is the MAX_PATH define. What is the equivalent for Unix/linux?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There is a PATH_MAX, but it is a bit problematic. From the bugs section of the realpath(3) man page:

    The POSIX.1-2001 standard version of this function is broken by
    design, since it is impossible to determine a suitable size for the
    output buffer, resolved_path. According to POSIX.1-2001 a buffer of
    size PATH_MAX suffices, but PATH_MAX need not be a defined
    constant, and may have to be obtained using pathconf(3). And
    asking pathconf(3) does not really help, since, on the one hand
    POSIX warns that the result of pathconf(3) may be huge and
    unsuitable for mallocing memory, and on the other hand
    pathconf(3) may return -1 to signify that PATH_MAXis not
    bounded.

    • 0