Re: [boost] [guideline] 31 character filenames?

Subject: Re: [boost] [guideline] 31 character filenames?
From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-03-28 09:50:11

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 4:44 AM, Paul A. Bristow
<pbristow_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>...
> As I recall, the 31 char limit was because we wanted to be able to copy all the files on a CD.

IIRC, there were still some users on old Macs with a 31 char limit on
hard disk filenames.

> I'm not sure this is still important (you'd probably zip anyway?), so I agree it should be dropped
> as a requirement, and the bugs 'won't-fixed'.
>
> I've had Doxygen generated filenames that were too long (for Windows?)  and had to use the mechanism
> provided to make them shorter, so I think we need to keep that (preferably bug-free ;-)

Windows maximum for a directory or file name depends on the particular
file system, but is typically 255 characters. Looking at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems, 255 seems a
pretty typical limit for modern file systems.

Windows maximum for a path is 32,767 Unicode characters in theory, but
a path longer than 260 (I.E. MAX_PATH) requires special syntax so
that's a practical limit for some uses.

There is also the question of readability and usability. At some
point, really long file names are an irritation, even if not
technically illegal.

So perhaps we might bump the limit at bit, but let's not get too extreme.

--Beman