Re: question about getcwd

[Jim Meyering]

I wrote:
...
> Unlike most other getcwd implementations, this one may *potentially*
> return a name that is arbitrarily long (and hence much longer than PATH_MAX).
>
> Currently that doesn't ever happen because the only systems
> that have openat support also have a mostly-working getcwd,
> and *it* imposes the PATH_MAX maximum.

To dot an "i", there is no explicit PATH_MAX-based limitation in this
implementation, since indeed, PATH_MAX need not be defined at all.

But in an environment where PATH_MAX is defined, this function can return
a directory name that is longer, and is thus not easy to manipulate with
standard functions, like open, stat, chdir, rmdir, etc.