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Windows may no longer have DOS code in it, but it certainly has DOS characteristics and limitations in it. Most significantly: drive letters, backslash path sep
by TwoBit 15y ago
Windows may no longer have DOS code in it, but it certainly has DOS characteristics and limitations in it. Most significantly: drive letters, backslash path separators, and 260 char file name limits. Also the pathetic batch file system. There are a few other limitations that come from DOS days.
- jpitz 15y agoThe Win32 subsystem certainly does enforce, at least in a default install, a lot of conventions that allow the system to maintain backwards compatibility with a long, long, MASSIVE legacy of software. Many, though not all, of them can be changed or disabled. That includes the command processor that interprets the batch language. If you think thats the only shell interpreter that is available for Windows, you should have a look at PowerShell. It's not too shabby.
- barrkel 15y agoThere are important reasons why filenames can't be safely made longer for older apps. One of the best things about MS is how well they've focused on backwards compatibility ahead of "technically correct" that works well for nobody but pedants. But for applications that want to opt in to longer paths, they can use '\\?\' prefixes on their absolute paths, and have up to 32K UTF-16 characters.