Argument list too long.

[Bill Rugolsky Jr.]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:01:20PM +0200, Dag Wieers wrote:
> It's not that I'm forcing anyone to use the whole argument space. And it's 
> not that I'm arguing to make it 1Gb either.
> 
> I don't see why processing 1Gb arguments would be slower than processing 
> 10 times 100Kb arguments. I'd even wildly guess the latter case is slower 
> than the first.

Wrong question.  The question is whether adding support for very large,
or arbitrarily large (hence swappable) arglist+environment makes the
common case (i.e., 1 page) significantly slower, or otherwise negatively
impacts the kernel (e.g., resource starvation).  We won't know until someone
implements it.  If you are interested in pursuing this, and seeing
it done the "right" way, see this post by Jamie Lokier from Mar 2000,
along with the surrounding thread:

	http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0003.0/0887.html

Regards,

	Bill Rugolsky