Maximum values for MIN and TIME?

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Submitted-by: ian at airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor)

I want to read up to 4096 characters from the terminal in
non-canonical mode.  I want to wait until the characters arrive (with
a timeout).  It seems sensible to me to set MIN to the number of
characters I want to read and use alarm for a timeout.  But what is
the maximum value that I can set MIN to on a POSIX system?  Does the
standard specify this anywhere?  On System V the maximum is probably
255, but it's pretty easy to imagine an implementation for which the
maximum is 127.  I assume the maximum value is <= MAX_INPUT; are there
any other constraints?  I've only seen the 1988 copy of the standard,
so apologies if this is covered in the 1990 revision.
-- 
Ian Taylor                   ian at airs.com                 uunet!airs!ian
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Volume-Number: Volume 24, Number 4