Maximum combined length of command line arguments in C

What is the maximum length of command line arguments including space between adjacent arguments ?

Questions by Ajay Kanse   answers by Ajay Kanse

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kbjarnason

  • Jul 1st, 2010
 

Presumably this would be (INT_MAX-1) * SIZE_MAX.  That is, each argument can presumably be up to SIZE_MAX chars, and there can be INT_MAX - 1 arguments (one being needed for argv[0], the program name).

Since the actual values of INT_MAX and SIZE_MAX are implementation defined, no maximum can be definitively given ahead of time.

That said, one might suspect the hosting OS and/or startup code would provide somewhat more stringent limits.

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jbode

  • Jul 6th, 2010
 

The C language standard does not impose any maximum on command line length/number of command-line arguments (not that I could find after a cursory search, anyway); the command-line shell is usually the limiting factor in this sort of thing. 

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manju

  • Sep 25th, 2011
 

It may vary from one operating system to another

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M.Sneha

  • Oct 3rd, 2020
 

It may vary from one operating system to another

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