Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!mcsun!unido!mikros!mwtech!martin
From: martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: of course!
Message-ID: <485@mwtech.UUCP>
Date: 23 Nov 89 12:39:39 GMT
References: <152@norsat.UUCP> <2586@unisoft.UUCP> <15769@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <17264@rpp386.cactus.org> <4526@ski.cs.vu.nl> <17303@rpp386.
Reply-To: martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel)
Organization: MIKROS Systemware, Darmstadt/W-Germany
Lines: 19

In article <1051@root44.co.uk> gwc@root.co.uk (Geoff Clare) writes:
[first part deleted]
>The fact that the strcat() may write past the end of dir[] is more of
>a problem.  Another is that PATH_MAX might not be defined (it should
>always be obtained via pathconf() in portable applications).  Anyway,
>using a maximum length array is rather wasteful - malloc(strlen(path)+3)
>would be much better all round.

But then you should not forget to check the result (in a portable approach
you cannot assume these huge amount of memory, some people are used to
have - or ULIMIT may be set low in the environment, the program runs).
And of course: Don't forget to do a 'free'. And what should the programm
do, if there is no memory from malloc() - abort? The one who uses the
directory-check function might not like this ...

Ehhm, what was the original question? Something faster than 'access()'.
Seems to be the time to stop this now ....

MW