Just spend the last 30 mins in total frustration on the way Windows 7 handles long file names. I was essentially trying to copy "LifeRay Social Office" portal folder structure from one location to the other.
On my Windows 7 desktop, the copy command from Explorer won't just work ! No error message, no warning, just that the window disappears. I did a remote desktop to the server and tried to copy from there. On the Windows Server 2000 box, I atleast got an error message - "Cannot copy file". But that's it, no information on why copy did not work.
I debugged further and tried to copy each individual file and only then did I get a meaningful error message - "The file Name(s) would be too long for the destination folder." So essentially the total path (string-length) of the files were long enough for Windows to go awry.
A quick google search showed that this is a core windows problem. Windows Explorer (File Explorer in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012) uses ANSI_API calls which is limited to 260 characters in the paths. There are some hot fixes available as a patch on windows, but did not try them yet.
So what are the options then? MS has released a tool called as RoboCopy that can handle this problem. Another popular tool is LongPathTool. In my case, fortunately I had JDK installed on my box. I used the jar command to inflate/deflate the folder structure between copying and it worked like a charm :) Strangely WinZip on Windows 7 did not work as it threw some weird error long file names.
There is another headache due to long file names. You also cannot delete such directories form the windows explorer !. I tried using the rmdir command from the command prompt and thankfully that worked !!!
On my Windows 7 desktop, the copy command from Explorer won't just work ! No error message, no warning, just that the window disappears. I did a remote desktop to the server and tried to copy from there. On the Windows Server 2000 box, I atleast got an error message - "Cannot copy file". But that's it, no information on why copy did not work.
I debugged further and tried to copy each individual file and only then did I get a meaningful error message - "The file Name(s) would be too long for the destination folder." So essentially the total path (string-length) of the files were long enough for Windows to go awry.
A quick google search showed that this is a core windows problem. Windows Explorer (File Explorer in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012) uses ANSI_API calls which is limited to 260 characters in the paths. There are some hot fixes available as a patch on windows, but did not try them yet.
So what are the options then? MS has released a tool called as RoboCopy that can handle this problem. Another popular tool is LongPathTool. In my case, fortunately I had JDK installed on my box. I used the jar command to inflate/deflate the folder structure between copying and it worked like a charm :) Strangely WinZip on Windows 7 did not work as it threw some weird error long file names.
There is another headache due to long file names. You also cannot delete such directories form the windows explorer !. I tried using the rmdir command from the command prompt and thankfully that worked !!!
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