[FAQ] ARG_MAX and POSIX

[Sven Mascheck]

Hello,

The FAQ, item 19. "Argument list too long", reads about ARG_MAX:

   "POSIX only requires 20k which was the traditional value used
    for probably 20 years."

In fact, this minimum is 4096. (It's accessible in the shell with
"getconf _POSIX_ARG_MAX" on such a system.  This value determines
only the minimum, POSIX also knows ARG_MAX for the actual value.)

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/limits.h.html

By the way, while the abovementioned 20k is a value on several systems,
it's not traditional.  Early values were 5120 (Version 7, System III,
3BSD, earlier SCOs) and 10240 (early 4BSD and SysV).

Regards, Sven
-- 
<http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/argmax/>