Is there an equivalent to WinAPI's MAX_PATH under linux/unix?

Question

If I want to allocate a char array (in C) that is guaranteed to be large enough to hold any valid absolute path+filename, how big does it need to be.

On Win32, ther

Answer 1

You can use the realpath function to allocate a buffer big enough for a specific path. If you pass it a null pointer as the 2nd argument it will allocate a buffer big enough for the path. The man page probably explains it better than I can:

realpath() expands all symbolic links and resolves references to /./, /../ and extra '/' characters in the null-terminated string named by path to produce a canonicalized absolute pathname. The resulting pathname is stored as a null-terminated string, up to a maximum of PATH_MAX bytes, in the buffer pointed to by resolved_path. The resulting path will have no symbolic link, /./ or /../ components.

If resolved_path is specified as NULL, then realpath() uses malloc(3) to allocate a buffer of up to PATH_MAX bytes to hold the resolved pathname, and returns a pointer to this buffer. The caller should deallocate this buffer using free(3).

http://linux.die.net/man/3/realpath