[py-dev] MAX_PATH on windows

[Martijn Faassen]

Hi there,

Apparently the Windows API has a limitation in how long paths can get, 
set to 256 characters!(!!)

This can break applications on Windows, including Py.

Here are some relevant resources:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-bugs-list/2006-June/033754.html

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-bugs-list/2007-March/037810.html

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247.aspx

There is some discussion that this could be fixed in Python 2.5. It's 
also however not 100% clear to me, looking at the discussions, whether 
it really is. I'm on Python 2.4 myself... I think at the very least it'd 
be good to have a test case in Py that tries to trigger this error.

Apparently a workaround is to prefix windows paths by "\\?\". Paths can 
then be a lot longer. I'm not sure how this interacts with the Python 
use of these APIs, however. If the workaround would really work, py 
could generate its windows paths with that prefix.

Regards,

Martijn