windows and file names > 256 bytes

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 8:10 PM, Tim Golden <mail at timgolden.me.uk> wrote:
>> Are there any times when you *don't* want Windows to use the
>> extended-length path?
>
> Yes: when you're passing a relative filepath. Which could pretty much be
> any time. As you might imagine, this has come up before -- there's an
> issue on the tracker for it somewhere. I just don't think it's simple
> enough for Python to know when and when not to use the extended path
> syntax without danger of breaking something.

Oh blah. So I suppose that means there's fundamentally no way to use a
long (>256 byte) relative path on Windows?

> Bear in mind that the \\?\ prefix doesn't just extend the length: it
> also allows otherwise special-cased characters such as "." or "..". It's
> a general-purpose mechanism for handing something straight to the file
> system without parsing it first.

Ohh. So... hmm. So what this really means is that a path could get
\\?\ prepended when, and ONLY when, it becomes absolute. Windows can
be a real pest...

ChrisA