Andrew Brown wrote:
> 
[...]
> on the other hand...think in terms of actual pathnames.  the 104 bytes
> will store a really long pathname.  as an example from solaris
> (blech!), i found a machine that's swapping to
> 
> /devices/iommu@0,10000000/sbus@0,10001000/espdma@5,8400000/esp@5,8800000/sd@3,0:b
> 
> although they actually call it "/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s1".  that's 81 bytes.
> plus one for the null.  a 1024 byte pathname (imho, quite excessive)
> would look like a block of text (assuming you're using a "normal"
> 80x24 window/screen) that would half fill your screen.  doesn't
> exactly strike me as useful.  104 should be quite sufficient.

said Bill Gates and decided that 640 KB is more than enough memory
that an operating system might want to deal with ... ;-)

If we can do it dynamic, why not do so? It looks to me as if this
functionality isn't exactly time critical.

  Guenther