pathway

[Scott Raney]

On Sun, 23 Feb 2003 Yves COPPE <yvescoppe at skynet.be> wrote:

> I find the problem
> when I use a long name for a folder
> the result gves something like
> 
> /HD/user/userName/.../the truncated long name of the folder#465ED/Text
> the long name of the folder is truncated and ends with "#465ED"
> what's that ??

You didn't include platform or version information in your post (very
important when making a report like this!), but it looks like the
brain-damaged way OS X deals with long paths when you access them from
Carbon (i.e. with an FSSpec, which only supports 32-byte path elements
and 256 bytes total paths).  This works a lot better in MC 2.5/RR 2.0
where you can at least deal with these paths if you stick to using
"open file", but there are still some things (like "answer file") that
are limited by the Carbon API and so don't work right with long paths.

So, the bottom line is, depite Apple's claims of support to the
contrary, it's a *really bad idea* to use long paths on OS X because
there are still just too many things (like FSSpecs that QT and
Navigation Services use) that don't work with them.  You say you can't
change these path names, but that sounds to me like a policy decision
and unfortunately policy is just going to have to change in the face
of technical reality in this case.
  Regards,
    Scott

> thank for your help
> -- 
> Greetings.
> 
> Yves COPPE
> 
> Email : yvescoppe at skynet.be

********************************************************
Scott Raney  raney at metacard.com  http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...