file names longer than MAX_PATH under Windows 2003

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 14:29:44 +0300, Sergey wrote:

> Hello.
> 
> I try to open file with pathname length 282 bytes:
> E:\files\..................\something.dat
> 
> On MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fs/naming_a_file.asp) described method to access 
> files with path length
> up to 32000 bytes: just add prefix \\?\ to file name.
> But when I try to pass prefixed name to file(), I get the same result as when I don't add the prefix: file not found. May be Python 
> just doesn't support long unicode filenames?
> Is there way to open such files?

Backslashes have special meaning to Python and need to be escaped. If you
do this:

f = file("E:\files\...\something.dat", "r")

Python's string escape rules means you are actually trying to open the
file "E:files...something.dat" which doesn't exist.

You should escape the backslashes:

f = file("E:\\files\\...\\something.dat", "r")

or use raw strings:

f = file(r"E:\files\...\something.dat", "r")

or just use forward slashes and let Windows deal with it:

f = file("E:/files/.../something.dat", "r")


Does this help?



-- 
Steven.