# Path length

**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/path-length/2729
**Category:** Fixed Bugs
**Tags:** bug-fixed
**Created:** [January 6, 2006, 9:50am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/path-length/2729 "2006-01-06T09:50:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![skware](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@skware](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/skware)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2006, 9:50am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/path-length/2729/1 "2006-01-06T09:50:25Z")

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Occasionally I come across problems reading and writing from files that have rather long names

e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\My Music\<i\>\<folder organisational structure (genres etc.)\>\artist\album\artist - album (year) - tracknum - title.mp3

I'm guessing that they're possibly coming upon the win32 path max of 260 chars. NTFS supports filenames up to 32,768 chars though. I noticed a blog post at [http://blogs.msdn.com/brian\_dewey/archive/...1/19/60263.aspx](http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_dewey/archive/2004/01/19/60263.aspx) that seems to describe this in more detail with the following quick fix

> [@](#):
>
> If you are writing a Win32-based program that manages arbitrary files, consider prepending "\\?" to the start of file names before you call CreateFile( ), DeleteFile( ), RenameFile( ), etc. This escape sequence at the start of a file name instructs the Win32 subsystem to bypass its normal name checking functions, and you will be able to use any valid NTFS name from your Win32 program.

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### Author: ![Sebastian\_Mares](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/sebastian_mares/32/9285_2.png) [@Sebastian\_Mares](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Sebastian_Mares)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2006, 10:15am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/path-length/2729/2 "2006-01-06T10:15:59Z")

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What MS doesn't say is that doing so will break Windows Explorer browsing support since Windows Explorer has a built-in limitation of ~255 characters.  
Edit: And probably, Winamp and other software don't use the \\?\ trick so they won't open the file either.

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### Author: ![Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/florian/32/5759_2.png) [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2006, 11:03am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/path-length/2729/3 "2006-01-07T11:03:06Z")

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I'll add this on my wishlist but it's very low priority (because of the limitations in Windows itself as Sebastian has explained).

Best regards,  
~ Florian

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### Author: ![Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/florian/32/5759_2.png) [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2018, 1:40pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/path-length/2729/4 "2018-12-28T13:40:39Z")

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