How long full path of a file may be...?

[sulacco]

Hi, Pros!
I need to write to a file a full path of that file. But how long path may be.
I'm asking because I need to know maximum size which path takes in order
properly structure the innards of the file.

[kirants]

use MAX_PATH ( it's a #define in windows header file )

[greg_dolley]

use MAX_PATH ( it's a #define in windows header file )

Which is 260 characters.

-Greg Dolley

[sulacco]

There is a problem. Imagine you have a file which is very deeply in directory
tree. You can place a file as deep as you wish. Yes? Ok. If you can
bury a file so deep then it's path grew very long, isn't it. If so my path will
be more then 260 characters long? Or maybe I miss something?

[kirants]

If you can bury a file so deep then it's path grew very long, isn't it.

As you say, If you can. So, question is, have you been successful in doing it?

[MrViggy]

There is a problem. Imagine you have a file which is very deeply in directory tree. You can place a file as deep as you wish. Yes? Ok. If you can
bury a file so deep then it's path grew very long, isn't it. If so my path will
be more then 260 characters long? Or maybe I miss something?

Well, if the Windows API won't support paths longer then 260 characters (MAX_PATH), I would think that this is not an issue (since you can't do it).

Viggy

[sulacco]

Ok. I will check it right now....wait...

[f1shrman]

I think this is possible to do, but you have to really want to do it.

First create a very deep directory structure.

Then using a utility like junction from Sysinternals create a symbolic link to the deepest directory.

Then accessing this directory from the symbolic link continuing creating your deep directory structure.

In the end you should end up with a directory path that is longer than 260 characters.

To access that directory I think you have to preappend the path with

\\\\?\\

so something like \\\\?\\c:\\...your really long path here\\mytextfile.txt

HTH

[NoHero]

One filename (e.g. myfile.txt) can have a maximal length of 255 unicode character under NTFS. Although the complete path name can have a maximum length of 32,767 unicode characters. See this for info and comparison.