On 1/10/2006 5:29 PM, John Sisson wrote:
Mapping the file name would reduce the length a bit, but i am
wondering if it is really worth the complexity for the small gain in
reduction of characters in the file path.
For users on JDK 1.5_06 (where the JDK bug is fixed), there are still
some related issues that I found after further investigation..
A lot of windows programs are coded to use MAX_PATH, which is defined
as 260 characters. If the windows unicode API is used to create the
file, paths longer than 256 characters can be used, which is what the
JDK bug fix does AFAIK.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fs/naming_a_file.asp
Examples of Windows XP programs that have problems with long file
paths are windows explorer and the the CMD shell (I tried them).
Hopefully decent backup programs work with paths greater than 260 chars..
WinZip is another example of a program that has problems, so as a
workaround users on JDK 1.5_06 can extract the zip with the JDK jar
utility (I have confirmed it worked with the following command):
C:\test\this\is\a\really\long\install\directory\name\to\demonstrate\jdk\bug\6182812>"C:\Program
Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_06\bin\jar" xvf geronimo-tomcat-j2ee-1.0.zip
Another workaround for users on JDK 1.4.2 is to install to a different
(shorter) location, or shorten file names in their web applications.
Do people think that the above workarounds are acceptable and it isn't
worth trying to shorten our file paths?
Makes sense to me.
Regards,
Alan
