From owner-freebsd-current  Sun Mar 12 18:13:33 2000
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 02:13:30 +0000
From: Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk>
Organization: Originative Solutions Ltd
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To: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com>
Cc: current@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: MAX_UID ?
References: <38CAD957.3C839375@originative.co.uk> <38CB322D.D12ED0B0@originative.co.uk> <200003130145.RAA51429@vashon.polstra.com> <38CC4AFD.7E649664@originative.co.uk> <200003130202.SAA51491@vashon.polstra.com>
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John Polstra wrote:
> 
> In article <38CC4AFD.7E649664@originative.co.uk>,
> Paul Richards  <paul@originative.co.uk> wrote:
> > John Polstra wrote:
> > >
> > > I guess it could go into <machine/limits.h> in the
> > > "!defined(_ANSI_SOURCE)" section.  Bruce might have a better idea.
> >
> > I don't think <machine/limits.h> is the right place. These are constants
> > that are definately not architecture dependent. The whole problem at the
> > moment is that the code is abusing architecture dependent constants in
> > lieu of anything better.
> 
> Hmm, you're right.  How about <sys/syslimits.h>?

That sounds ideal :-)

I guess my next question is, are there any objections to

#define UID_MAX ((uid_t)0-1)

which would actually give us the best of both worlds. I assume that gcc
optimises the calculation away so it's effectively a constant but
automagically of the right size.

I can see the flaw in that straight away in that uid_t isn't available
in <sys/syslimits.h>

On the other hand, since you may want to limit the MAX_UID (or some
other paramter) independently of the size of the type then its probably
best to maintain the value manually in any case.


Paul.


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