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« on: January 13, 2013, 07:25 AM »
This tool IS a nice idea, but it appears that the way it was implemented, it doesn't address the issue as directly as would be most useful.
What matters as far as Windows failing to be able to open a given file is that the >total< length of the entire path + filename (incl. extension) not exceed (255? 260? "MAX_PATH") characters. This tool does not actually give you any way to search by that criteria. It only allows finding files with a path WITHOUT FILENAME > certain length, or a filename WITHOUT PATH and WITHOUT EXTENSION > certain length.
In the parlance of this tool, what matters is the number that appears in the "total" column - yet there is no way to tell the tool to search for files with total > 255. I.e. An invalid file might have "path size" 120, "name size" 100, and "extension" 50. The total is 270, which is too long. But the only way you would've gotten the tool to find this was by searching overbroadly, i.e. for "path length > 119"...which would of course turn up tons of results whose "total" <= 255. Plus that search would miss something with path size 100, name size 120, extension 50.
Ultimately, there is no one search you can perform that will find all your long paths. You have to perform a series of overbroad searches, and then in each case only look at the subset of your search results that actually have long totals.
If this tool allowed for searching by "total," or just did away with the separation between path, filename and extension, it would accomplish the goal.
Also: Feature? Bug? The results list truncates path results that exceed 259 chars.
Thanks for submitting your tool, though!
I tried out Path Scanner, but it merely crashed.
So, has anyone found a tool that just finds files with full paths > MAX_PATH? This chronic Windows issue can be impossible to avoid; it would be great to be able to catch the offenders (and, ideally, rename or move them within the tool).