Support for long paths (ie paths greater than 255 characters) has been an increasingly requested feature and so I’m really pleased to see it added to the latest version of FileLocator Pro. Since FileLocator Pro does sometimes rely on the Windows shell for functionality such as file context menus it’s possible that, until Windows fully supports long paths, not every aspect will function perfectly but any issues should be the exception and not the norm.

File paths in Windows are more complicated than most end users realise but fortunately Windows hides much of the complexity, if you’re interested in some of the inner workings I recommend you read this blog post: DOS to NT: A Path’s Journey.

Although Microsoft has been adding long path support to Windows 10 it’s actually quite a difficult problem. Many third party applications have the value (commonly called MAX_PATH) hard coded since the Windows API documentation specifically refers to it. Therefore it’s potentially troublesome for Windows 10 to simply switch on long file support by default, those third party applications not expecting paths longer than MAX_PATH might start crashing with buffer overflows, or worse if the overflows are maliciously targeted.

Please try out the long path support in FileLocator Pro and, as always, if you find any problems please report it to Tech Support.