Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 01:49:26 +0000 From: Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org> To: Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> Cc: net@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-standards@bostonradio.org, brian@Awfulhak.org Subject: Re: MAXHOSTNAMELEN redux Message-ID: <200103130149.f2D1nQB08449@hak.lan.Awfulhak.org> In-Reply-To: Message from Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> of "Mon, 12 Mar 2001 13:13:22 EST." <200103121813.NAA61145@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
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Just some ramblings....
I find this a bit odd. I concluded recently that NAME_MAX was the
odd-one-out WRT not having the NUL only because it is the maximum
size of a *component* of a path. When the value is used, it makes
sense to talk in terms of the without-NUL value.
This change seems to make it even more likely that people will forget
whether MUMBLE_MAX includes the NUL or not.
If I were defining this sort of thing (hah!), I'd have *_LEN as
definitions without NULs and *_SIZE as definitions with the NUL.
*_MAX seems to be used more commonly as the maximum number of
something (ARG_MAX, CHILD_MAX), so NAME_MAX seems to be a misspelt
version of NAME_CHARS_MAX.... ditto for PATH_MAX and probably others.
Ok, I'm done :-)
> My bug report against the current POSIX draft was accepted. For the
> record, here are the changes being made. (``The indicated line'' is
> referring to a line in the definition of gethostname() where the
> length of the buffer was previously defined to be 256, including the
> terminating null. The excluding-null semantics were chosen for
> parallel construction with {NAME_MAX} and similar constants.
>
> At the indicated line, for 255 substitute {HOST_NAME_MAX}.
> At XBD page 261 (<limits.h>) before line 8966 insert:
>
> {HOST_NAME_MAX}
> Maximum length of a host name (not including the terminating
> null) as returned from the gethostname() function.
> Minimum acceptable value: {_POSIX_HOST_NAME_MAX}
>
> Before line 9183, insert:
>
> {_POSIX_HOST_NAME_MAX}
> Maximum length of a host name (not including the terminating
> null) as returned from the gethostname() function.
> Value: 255
>
> At XBD page 424 (<unistd.h>) before line 14818 insert:
>
> _SC_HOST_NAME_MAX
>
> At XSH page 1982 (sysconf()) before line 45530 insert:
>
> {HOST_NAME_MAX} _SC_HOST_NAME_MAX
>
> I include the last two changes for completeness only; I do not
> believe that applications are likely to use the sysconf() interface
> for this purpose.
>
> -GAWollman
--
Brian <brian@Awfulhak.org> <brian@[uk.]FreeBSD.org>
<http://www.Awfulhak.org>; <brian@[uk.]OpenBSD.org>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour !
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