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Full Discussion: mkdir limitations
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers mkdir limitations Post 26918 by Perderabo on Monday 26th of August 2002 08:20:52 AM
Old 08-26-2002
I did a "man mkdir" and I didn't find an answer to these questions.

The mkdir() system call code in the kernel does not directly impose a limit on the length of a filename. However it must talk to the code for filesystem and this will impose a limit. What that limit is depends on the file system. Posix will guarantee at least 14 characters. To be posix compliant, a unix system must allow at least that much. HP-UX still supports the "short filename" option. If you choose, you can make HP-UX enforce a 14 character limit. This is rarely done. The most common limit these days is 255 characters for a filename. And the most common limit for a full path name is 1023.

You probably will find that you have a pathconf() system call that can determine your exact limit. Note that you must give pathconf() a file name because the limits can vary from filesystem to filesystem.

Because a slash is used to separate the components of a pathname, a slash cannot be used inside a component. And binary zero is used to terminate a string. So no binary zeros either. Any other byte value is fair game as far as the kernel is concerned. A filename with an embedded carriage return will cause you nasty problems. And you really will be better off if you limit yourself to printable characters.
 

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PATHCONF(2)						      BSD System Calls Manual						       PATHCONF(2)

NAME
pathconf, fpathconf -- get configurable pathname variables SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h> long pathconf(const char *path, int name); long fpathconf(int fd, int name); DESCRIPTION
The pathconf() and fpathconf() functions provides a method for applications to determine the current value of a configurable system limit or option variable associated with a pathname or file descriptor. For pathconf, the path argument is the name of a file or directory. For fpathconf, the fd argument is an open file descriptor. The name argument specifies the system variable to be queried. Symbolic constants for each name value are found in the include file <unistd.h>. The available values are as follows: _PC_LINK_MAX The maximum file link count. _PC_MAX_CANON The maximum number of bytes in terminal canonical input line. _PC_MAX_INPUT The minimum maximum number of bytes for which space is available in a terminal input queue. _PC_NAME_MAX The maximum number of bytes in a file name. _PC_PATH_MAX The maximum number of bytes in a pathname. _PC_PIPE_BUF The maximum number of bytes which will be written atomically to a pipe. _PC_CHOWN_RESTRICTED Return 1 if appropriate privileges are required for the chown(2) system call, otherwise 0. _PC_NO_TRUNC Return 1 if file names longer than KERN_NAME_MAX are truncated. _PC_VDISABLE Returns the terminal character disabling value. RETURN VALUES
If the call to pathconf or fpathconf is not successful, -1 is returned and errno is set appropriately. Otherwise, if the variable is associ- ated with functionality that does not have a limit in the system, -1 is returned and errno is not modified. Otherwise, the current variable value is returned. ERRORS
If any of the following conditions occur, the pathconf and fpathconf functions shall return -1 and set errno to the corresponding value. [EINVAL] The value of the name argument is invalid. [EINVAL] The implementation does not support an association of the variable name with the associated file. Pathconf() will fail if: [ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory. [ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters. [ENOENT] The named file does not exist. [EACCES] Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix. [ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. [EIO] An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. Fpathconf() will fail if: [EBADF] fd is not a valid open file descriptor. [EIO] An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. SEE ALSO
sysctl(3) HISTORY
The pathconf and fpathconf functions first appeared in 4.4BSD. 4th Berkeley Distribution June 4, 1993 4th Berkeley Distribution
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