NTFS - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org

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!

    • Exec@pawb.socialEnglish
      25·
      a year ago

      Nope, long paths are supported since 8.1 or 10 person bit you have to enable it yourself because very old apps can break

      • eco@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        a year ago

        Furthermore, apps using the unicode versions of functions (which all apps should be doing for a couple decades now) have 32kb maximum character length paths.

      • Aux@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        a year ago

        That’s not even a Windows issue, that’s an issue with specific Win32 API.

    • sorenant@lemmy.worldEnglish
      116·
      a year ago

      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.

      • Tekchip@kbin.social
        33·
        a year ago

        I think they mean the full path length. As in you can’t nest folders too deep or the total path length hits a limit. Not individual folder name limits.

      • RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.caEnglish
        261·
        a year ago

        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.

        • Serinus@lemmy.mlEnglish
          7·
          a year ago

          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.

          • chinpokomon@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            a year ago

            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.

        • Aux@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          a year ago

          32k Unicode characters. No, mate, it’s not easy to run up.

        • motorwerks@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          78·
          a year ago

          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.

          • d3Xt3r@lemmy.worldEnglish
            16·
            a year ago

            Not OP, but I occasionally come across this issue at work, where some user complains they they are unable to access a file/folder because of the limit. You often find this in medium-large organisations with many regions and divisions and departments etc. Usually they would create a shortcut to their team/project’s folder space so they don’t have to manually navigate to it each time. The folder structure might be quite nested, but it’s organized logically, it makes sense. Better than dumping millions of files into a single folder.

            Anyways, this isn’t actually an NTFS limit, but a Windows API limit. There’s even a registry value[1] you can change to lift the limit, but the problem is that it can crash legacy programs or lead to unexpected behavior, so large organisations (like ours) shy away from the change.

            1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/maximum-file-path-limitation?tabs=registry
          • RiskableOPEnglish
            8·
            a year ago

            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.

              • bighi@lemmy.worldEnglish
                11·
                a year ago

                People have been talking about the real problem from the beginning of the thread: small character limit on file paths.

                  • bighi@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    2·
                    a year ago

                    Only if you go into settings, disable the safety measures and change it. And some apps might break.

                    No, the default file path limit is 256 characters. And I don’t mean file name. Full file path.

                • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
                  11·
                  a year ago

                  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.

                  • orangeboats@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    3·
                    a year ago

                    If your name consists of non-ASCII characters, like Thai words or Arabic or Chinese, it’s pretty easy to rack up >15 bytes in your username alone.