Maximum length of the Path that can be given while creating a directory

Question

Hi
I would like to know the maximum length of a path that can be given in solaris?
e.g i have to create a directory like this
mkdir /a/b/c..../z ]---> what can be the max length ?
in the same way while reading a path also.
i heard something like getconf PATH_MAX .But i dont know what is this used for.
the value i got when i executed the above command is 1024 ]-->what is this value?
Thanks in advance
Raghu Amilineni

Answer 1

raghu_java wrote:
Hi
I would like to know the maximum length of a path that can be given in solaris?What do you mean by "given"? The maximum that you can pass to the OS directly in many cases is PATH_MAX. But you can have files exist that are described by much longer absolute paths.
e.g i have to create a directory like this
mkdir /a/b/c..../z ]---> what can be the max length ?Very long in some sense. But mkdir will probably fail if handed a string longer than PATH_MAX.
in the same way while reading a path also.
i heard something like getconf PATH_MAX .But i dont know what is this used for.
the value i got when i executed the above command is 1024 ]-->what is this value?That is the guaranteed limit for the length of a path that system calls will deal with. But it is possible the absolute path of a file may be larger.
Darren