Re: [boost] [filesystem] temp_directory_path() behavior on Windows

Subject: Re: [boost] [filesystem] temp_directory_path() behavior on Windows
From: Gavin Lambert (gavinl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-02-04 16:57:59

On 5/02/2015 04:08, Niall Douglas wrote:
> On 4 Feb 2015 at 14:55, Domagoj Saric wrote:
>
>> 1) GetTempPath() is not deprecated (which I would take to mean that the
>> 'manufacturer of the OS' holds this function to be sufficient for 'most users')
>
> That's a reasonable point. Apart from its hardcoded 260 char limit.

Windows in general does not react well to paths exceeding this limit 
anywhere.  While yes, there are ways to bypass the limit, there are many 
restrictions on this functionality and most applications don't use those 
alternatives and so will choke if they happen to come across such a 
path.  It's usually limited to very specialised scenarios (eg. backup 
software).

Perhaps this is a chicken-and-egg problem (if it were easier for apps to 
deal with longer paths, maybe they'd do it, and then eventually 
everybody would start doing it -- suggesting that a useful goal of a 
library would be to make this easy) though.