Home / server / Questions / 406675
In Process
Dexter
Asked: 2012-07-12 00:59:02 +0800 CST

Path Length in Windows

  • 772

Is there any reason paths are still limited to ~250 characters in Windows? I'm not asking about a solution here (since there isn't one, other than \\?\ perhaps), but about why this is still an issue in 2012.

Microsoft itself has failed to provide an explanation, so I'm hoping that maybe someone here, who has more insight into this than me, can provide an answer.

Also, if \\?\ is supposed to be the "cure" to this, why aren't paths implicitly converted to the \\?\ notation by Microsoft's own programs?

windows path

1 Answers

  1. My guess is that since MAX_PATH has been well-defined for a number of years, changing it to a bigger value now would be potentially detrimental to a lot of software that relies on it.

    There's a lot of ways they could attempt to "fix" this (including shim-libraries, and simply deprecating its use and changing it slowly over time), but they're not extremely trivial to implement. They do provide a work around, that you mention, and that is typically the Microsoft way to do things: don't break backwards compatibility, just add new features.

    • 4