Re: [bug-gnulib] xreadlink.c initial buffer size guesstimate

[Bruno Haible]

Liyang HU wrote:
> I've been getting ``ls: memory exhausted'' messages, which I eventually
> tracked down to xreadlink() attempting to allocate several hundred MB of
> memory, since that's what lstat() returns[0] for the symlink's st_size.
> In actuality, the length of the symlink were mostly under 128 bytes.

The xreadlink.c in GNU gettext (also originally from Jim Meyering)
  
http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/gettext/gnulib-local/lib/xreadlink.c?rev=1.3&root=gettext

should be more robust: It uses an initial buffer size of 1024, and
requires more only if readlink() reports that the link is longer. As such,
it doesn't require an st_size guess or estimate.

And in the frequent case that the link is smaller than 1024 and that the
guess was right, both implementations call xmalloc just once.

Bruno