Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!convex!news
From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Long /etc/group
Message-ID: <1991Mar06.163751.29147@convex.com>
Date: 6 Mar 91 16:37:51 GMT
References: <26192@adm.brl.mil> <1991Mar6.084704.11895@csn.org>
Sender: news@convex.com (news access account)
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX
Lines: 35
Nntp-Posting-Host: pixel.convex.com

From the keyboard of frechett@spot.Colorado.EDU (-=Runaway Daemon=-):
:In article <26192@adm.brl.mil> wolf@grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr (Christophe Wolfhugel) writes:
:|>I have a long group in my /etc/group file, with over 512 caracters in the
:|>line. Editor ed does not support longer lines, but I can continue to
:|>extend the line with vi. 
:|>
:|>So my question: is there any limit for the system in the length of a
:|>/etc/group entry? Is yes, how long, and how could I solve this? Create
:|>a second entry for the same group? or... ?
:I don't know if anything relating to the use of the /etc/group file is going to
:object but you will find that since vi is a "visual" editor it gets really 
:upset if you try to edit a line that won't fit on the screen.  I have done it
:before and it is quite a mess.  It resulted in numerous core dumpings and such.

Well, I never got coredumps, but I did have some problems. This is
one of those constants I added a zero (order of magnitude) to in 
my copy of vi.  I can now handle 16k lines.  Again, a stupid
way to do things, but easier than making it infinit.

You've a bigger problem with long groups though:
YP's brain-dead 1k dbm-enforced data limit.

:The way to get around this at that point is to make a little perl script
:because as we all know by now, perl can do anything. ;)  Actually, it is just
:that perl care how long a single line is and in many cases it is benficail to
:turn a whole file into one line so that perl can do something special to it.

You mean perl DOESN'T care.  But yes, I've done that to.

--tom
--
	I get so tired of utilities with arbitrary, undocumented,
	compiled-in limits.  Don't you?

Tom Christiansen		tchrist@convex.com	convex!tchrist