Why does getpwd() have to chdir()?

[Richard Tobin]

In article <JBW.90Oct16175441 at bucsf.bu.edu> jbw at bucsf.bu.edu (Joe Wells) writes:
>In most Unixes, there's a kernel limit of 1024 characters in a pathname.
>If your current directory were located deep enough in the filesystem,
>getcwd() couldn't make it all the way up to the root without chdir()-ing.

In this case, the returned pathname is unlikely to be very useful!

-- Richard
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