"path too long", any fixes in sight?

  • Thread starter Thread starter bderidder
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bderidder

Hi,

When I found SyncToy on the Microsoft site, I was very excited about
the set of features. I couldn't wait to try it out. When I did, it
started to give me "path too long" errors in the preview. Searching on
this discussion forum I could find some references to this error.

As far as I understand, this "path too long" exception is generated
because of limitations somewhere in the system (OS, .NET, SyncToy ?).

What I don't understand is why I can create paths this long, why I can
work with files located in paths that seem too long, why I yet have to
encounter a program, besides SyncToy, that will choke on these long
paths. Since I have been using Windows, all applications of the MS
Office Suit, all browsers and mail clients have neverencountered a
single issue in this area.

It seems to me like a limitation that is artificial, at least to the
end-user.

Any reactions from the developers of SyncToy on this subject?
 
Searching the internet, I found other applications bumping up against this
260 character limit, so I infer that this limitation is inherent in some
standard that the .net component must conform to.

One workaround is to strategically substitute the short 8.3 filename for
a particular long component of your paths, e.g., for

c:\Documents and Settings\...

substitute:

c:\Docume~1\...

The above workaround worked for me, so I didn't get to try another
idea, that I think probably would have worked. Since both my machines
were in a locally networked workgroup, I think I could have mapped,
either the source or the destination drive and avoided the protocol
that has the limitations. If someone trys this workaround, please
let us know how it goes. -- mlewitt
 
Another workaround is to get rid of Synctoy and use rsync:

http://optics.ph.unimelb.edu.au/help/rsync/rsync_pc1.html

If they didn't fix the path limitation problem from version 1.0b to 1.2
it is likely to be a deeply entrenched problem. Or who knows.

They claimed to have "fixed" it by adding an item in the help file that
shows how to map an UNC path. That will work if you are being limited
because of a few chars but it will not help people who have deep
directory structures.

my 2 cents
 
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