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by elarkin 5044 days ago
You can generally get around windows' 255 absolute character length limits by using UNC paths. We had that problem at my last company, where the system would allow you to write files into a path but not delete them.

There isn't a modern reason for the limit either. NTFS supports longer path names, as does FAT if I remember correctly. Rather irritating.
1 comments
eckyptang 5044 days ago
Never tried the UNC hack. Might have a bash at that.

The actual restriction is in the Win32 subsystem which has both C string and Unicode versions of API calls. Some API is hooked in via the C API which tends to use TCHAR var[MAX_PATH] as the buffers. It's a royal PITA.

The NT Native API and NTFS don't have such small limits (32k comes to mind).

It's a shame really as NT is a beautiful piece of engineering with a shitty Win32 subsystem thrown on the top.

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