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X-Authentication-Warning: slinky.cs.nyu.edu: pechtcha owned process doing -bs
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 17:59:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Nicolas BUONOMO <buonomo DOT nicolas AT free DOT fr>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Cygwin/bash: need environment variables >32K
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 <3F98424A DOT 3010104 AT free DOT fr>
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On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Nicolas BUONOMO wrote:

> Corinna Vinschen a ecrit :
>
> > 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
>
> I think it's possible to change the size of the environnement for
> the DOS box. I have do that for DOS application (on NT4), but I
> don't remeber how. I try to find it.
>
> Nicolas

It's the "/E" flag to cmd.exe.  However, that doesn't help you, as it only
increases the size of the *total* environment.  Each individual
environment variable is still limited to 32k.  That's Windows for you.
	Igor
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