Re: [PATCH] index: be careful when handling long names

Alex Riesen [off-list ref] writes:

Junio C Hamano, Sun, Jan 13, 2008 23:36:34 +0100:

quoted

+test_expect_success 'very long name in the index handled sanely' '
+
+	a=a && # 1
+	a=$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a && # 16
+	a=$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a && # 256
+	a=$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a$a && # 4096

I'd expect it to fail on some systems (everywindowsthing up to w2k,
maybe some commercial unices).

My understanding is that Everywindowsthing do not come with any
(POSIX compliant) shell that we support by default, so if you
are talking about a limit of shell variable value, I do not
think it is an issue to begin with.  It is just the matter of
picking a sensible shell (I understand both Cygwin and msys
ports use a shell that supports more than 4k bytes in value
given to a variable).

I would agree that it might overflow the argument limit when
this is given to "echo", though.  We cannot do much about it,
but you may have cleverer ideas.