ITEM: R2357L

Ridiculously long path in csh script

ENV:

AIX 3.2.5

DESC:

Customer is getting the following error message from a csh
script:

  Warning: ridiculously long PATH truncated.

Is there some way to make the system accept this long PATH?

Action:

I investigated the csh source code and that is exactly where 
the message is coming from...  If there is no csh.cat file in 
your NLSPATH or if you are using the C locale, you will get a 
default message for the M_LONGPATH error.  This default is 
exactly the message the customer is seeing:

  "Warning: ridiculously long PATH truncated".

It appears that the message was changed in the AIX message 
catalogs to "Warning: long PATH truncated", but not in the 
default message that is in the source code.  I tried this
on a SunOS system and they give the "ridiculously" message 
as well.  It appears that this message is historical UN*X.

In the C Shell, the size of the buffer to hold the PATH is 
hardcoded to 2*BUFSIZ or 8192 characters.  BUFSIZ is set in 
/usr/include/stdio.h to 4096:

  \#define BUFSIZ          4096

Unfortunately, there is no way to increase the size of this 
buffer without modifying the source code.  Here are some 
suggestions for the customer in determining how to circumvent 
the limitation:

  - Take a closer look at their PATH variable and make sure 
    that all of the paths specified are required.  If this is 
    in a script, use the set command to view the value of PATH.

  - How is the PATH variable set?  It may have accidentally 
    gotten set in a loop of some sort.

  - If all of the paths are valid, you may wish to build into the
    logic of the program some sort of test having two different 
    PATH values depending on what is needed for this execution of 
    the script.



Support Line: Ridiculously long path in csh script ITEM: R2357L

Dated: February 1995 Category: N/A

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