File name length in Windows

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Rorschach
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File name length in Windows

Postby Rorschach » 19 Jul 2010, 14:09

It seems to be a maximum 40 characters which is proving a problem for me. I'm tagging stuff in iTunes and the album titles are necessarily long with all the differenciated information at the end. So Windows is dumping everythin into one folder with the same, truncated name.
Are you following me?

Anyway, any idea if and how it can be increased?
Bugger off.

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JQW
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Re: File name length in Windows

Postby JQW » 19 Jul 2010, 15:34

Windows hard drives can be formatted in two ways - NTFS and FAT32. Both have a limit of 255 characters using an encoding system called UTF-16. Some obscure characters take up two blocks of UTF-16, but even so that's a minimum of 127 characters per file.

The problem is that Windows limits the entire pathname (i.e. the length of all filenames and folders) to 255 characters under some circumstances, and to keep application compatibility Apple have had to truncate filenames in iTunes to 40 characters to get inside this limit. In addition many network storage systems have limitations in their pathnames which complicate things further.

A major re-write of iTunes will be needed to support longer filenames. I gather that one is coming soon, but whether this limit will be broken remains to be seen.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell

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Rorschach
Posts: 4118
Joined: 02 Jun 2008, 12:43
Location: The north side of my town faces east, and the east faces south

Re: File name length in Windows

Postby Rorschach » 19 Jul 2010, 16:15

But for now I'm stuck with 40, right?
Bugger off.

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JQW
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Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 13:27
Location: The Crazy Loquat, Szegerely

Re: File name length in Windows

Postby JQW » 19 Jul 2010, 17:24

Yes, unfortunately.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell


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