As a full time desktop Linux user since 1999 (the actual year of the Linux desktop, I swear) I wish all you Windows folks the best of luck on the next clean install 👍
…and Happy 30th Birthday “New Technology” File System!
Unbelievably, Windows still has a ridiculously short filepath length limit.
Are you writing parahraphs for folder/file names? That’s one “issue” I never had problem with.
Maybe enterprises need a solution for it but that’s a very different use case from most end users.
Improvements are always welcome but saying it’s “ridiculously short” makes the problem sound worse than it is.
File paths. Not just the filename, the entire directory path, including the filename. It’s way too easy to run up against limit if you’re actually organized.
It might be 255 characters for the entire path?
I’ve run into it at work where I don’t get to choose many elements. Thanks “My Name - OneDrive” and people who insist on embedding file information into filenames.
The limit was 260. The OS and the filesystem support more. You have to enable a registry key and apps need to have a manifest which says they understand file paths longer than 260 characters. So while it hasn’t been a limitation for awhile, as long as apps were coded to support lesser path lengths it will continue to be a problem. There needs to be an conversion mechanism like Windows 95 had so that apps could continue to use short file names. Internally the app could use short path names while the rest of the OS was no longer held back.
You like diving 12 folders deep to find the file you’re after? I feel like there’s better, more efficient ways to be organized using metadata, but maybe I’m wrong.
Metadata is slow, messy, and volatile. Also, shortcuts are a thing.
C:\Users\axexandriaanastasiachristianson\Downloads\some_git_repo\src\...You run into the file parth limit all the fucking time if you’re a developer at an organization that enforces fullname usernames.
I think I’ve spotted the real problem.
People have been talking about the real problem from the beginning of the thread: small character limit on file paths.
I would be pissed if they made me use such a ridiculously long login name at work. Mine is twelve characters and that’s already a pain in the ass (but it’s a huge company and I have a really common name, so I guess all the shorter variations were already taken).
Edit: Also, I checked it’s really very simple to enable 32kb paths in recent versions of Windows.
