fail on excessively long file names / paths

[DaveS]

Hello,

I have run into an annoying problem in Windows XP. Inadvertently, when saving various online internet articles for later reading, I have saved files with ridiculously long names (and of course their associated equally long named accessory folders). Unfortunately Firefox let me save them, but now I can't manage them. xyPlorer will display them but is then unable to delete or rename them. I can't blame xyP, because Windows Explorer can't handle them either. This has been causing some good sized problems in my routine file cleanup and automated ftp backup activities.

I did find some manual workarounds: for example I can pull out all the good files, leaving just the bad ones in a folder and then delete the whole folder one level up. The main problem that is most aggravating is that all file copy operations just halt with the expected "unable to copy" message, with no indication of which actual file is the offender. When one is attempting to do mass file backup operations that makes it extremely tedious to try and search through the whole file tree looking for the offenders -- especially when some filenames and paths are marginally close to the limit but not quite defective. Expanding whole trees helps, but is also a pretty slow way to go.

I realize that the very uninformative error message probably originates from Windows' API and not from xyP itself, but I was wondering if xyP has any diagnostic utility that can be called up to identify exactly where file copy operations are halting. That would sure speed things up when I'm trying to locate and toast the offenders. I did of course go through xyP's help screens and have a look through the online FAQs. Sorry if I missed something obvious. If there is in fact some utility in xyP to identify file copy fail points I would be most grateful for that information. Also, I was wondering if there is any kind of environment variable I might alter in Windows to enable excessive length paths and filenames to be handled, even just temporarily. I will of course be a lot more careful about what I save off the net in future, but at the moment I am stuck with a considerable cleanup job from several years of unsuspecting downloads. Thanks to anyone who can advise.

[bdeshi]

Do you have this enabled? Tools > Configuration > Controls and More > Miscellaneous > Support overlong filenames

[DaveS]

Hmm... Thank you. That option ("controls and more") doesn't seem to be in my edition of xyP (vers 7.90.0120). I will check for an update right away. It's kind of comical really: I have never been infected by a virus, ever, but I seem to be massively infested by overlong filenames and paths. I'm a little disappointed that both FireFox and Windows would permit me to get into this mess, cheerfully saving what NTFS then cannot handle. As for Microsoft, I guess I shouldn't be surprised: I browsed one of their technical articles about how to handle this problem and was invited to save another 100 or so character long filename from their same article. These were not entertainment files, or I wouldn't have bothered saving them in the first place. They were all technical articles, too long to just read online or commit entirely to memory, so naturally I always just download anything like that to digest and use at my leisure. Seems the writers on the web have tended to be rather lazy about naming their files these days. There should be an online contest to see who can post the most ridiculously long filename.

And if anyone can write some sort of filter utility that watches over file and path lengths and brings up a dialog to correct them at time of import, I'm in. Can we put that on the xyP development wish list? In the meantime I'll be much more careful. This all arose because I started cleaning up the file structure on my several platforms and doing mass offsite ftp backup. Used to be my ftp service would reject just a tiny handful of not very important files in one little corner of the system. Now, like bankers in the old Capital One add, they're everywhere. Think I need an exterminator. In the meantime, thanks for the tip and I will follow it up immediately.

[highend]

E.g.:

Code: Select all

goto "?len: > 249 /r";

This is a quick search (to be used inside the address bar). From there you could select all files, right click on one of them -> Rename Special -> Edit Item Names...

If that context menu exists in your old version

[PeterH]

(vers 7.90.0120)

Hm - current is 15.20.0108

And if I found it right: the first support of XY for (over)long filenames started with 7.90.0254 - seems you just missed it

[DaveS]

Many thanks all. Yes 7.90.0120 reports as "more than up to date" on the website (bit of enthusiasm there) but in fact the final release 15.20.0100 is quite a bit more developed and does indeed have the additional tools. And thanks also for the search command string to rapidly track down offenders. I am now a happy man.