Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 12:10:47 +0200
From: Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Cygwin/bash: need environment variables >32K
Message-ID: <20031023101047.GZ1653@cygbert.vinschen.de>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
References: <445C57B81208C24EAD99F2944DBB9D29030212FE AT BLNSS10A> <200310230938 DOT LAA24318 AT trantor DOT eads-dsn DOT com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <200310230938.LAA24318@trantor.eads-dsn.com>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i

On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 11:39:39AM +0200, david.liberce wrote:
> 
> I reproduce this behaviour.
> 
> Looks like the PATH  environment variable is not valid anymore after $VAR
> has been asigned?

Nope.  I debugged this situation.  It looks like a Windows restriction.
When trying to call CreateProcess() with this long environment variable
in the environment block, CreateProcess() fails with Windows error 87,
"The parameter is incorrect."  But there's no hint about a limit in the
CreateProcess() man page.

*dig, dig, dig*

Uh, ok, I found the following hint in the GetEnvironmentVariable() man page:

  lpBuffer 
      [out] Pointer to a buffer that receives the contents of the specified
      environment variable. An environment variable has a maximum size limit
      of 32,767 characters, including the null-terminating character.

So, that explains it.

Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Developer                                mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat, Inc.

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/