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Date:      Thu, 16 Nov 2000 15:24:21 -0800
From:      Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
To:        Ernst de Haan <ernst@jollem.com>
Cc:        Sebastiaan van Erk <sebster@sebster.com>, Zero Sum <count@shalimar.net.au>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: argument list too long
Message-ID:  <20001116152421.A18037@fw.wintelcom.net>
In-Reply-To: <20001117000816.B15150@c187104187.telekabel.chello.nl>; from ernst@jollem.com on Fri, Nov 17, 2000 at 12:08:16AM %2B0100
References:  <20001116091607.A97857@sebster.com> <00111621362707.00522@shalimar.net.au> <20001116122313.A69018@sebster.com> <00111700205500.61931@shalimar.net.au> <20001116145641.A22842@sebster.com> <20001116105654.G830@fw.wintelcom.net> <20001116231731.A14470@c187104187.telekabel.chello.nl> <20001116143843.S830@fw.wintelcom.net> <20001117000816.B15150@c187104187.telekabel.chello.nl>

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* Ernst de Haan <ernst@jollem.com> [001116 15:09] wrote:
> 
>    // Never crash out, unless we run out of memory :)

And what about Bob down the hall that's screwed because your program
just allocated all the kernel memory to pass your super long arglist?

What about the next program you want to run?

> > Coders that assume inifinite memory are fooling themselves and
> > need to learn how to code properly.
> 
> Sure, but so are coders that assume very limited memory! :)

I'm not assuming very little memory, I'm assuming that it wouldn't
be good if one was able to cause a machine to fail all further
execs by just passing a multimegabyte arglist.

I do agree that on large memory machines some of these limits should
be relaxed, ie somehow scaled to make more efficient usage of the
available memory, but they can't be made into potential infinite
consumers of resources.

The limits are there for protection and there's APIs to determine
the limits and workarounds that have existed for years prior to
this revelation you call "linked lists".

So why not use the tools already available before trying to foster
these silly new ways apon us.

 :-)

-- 
-Alfred



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