4 ms·

Please fix Microsoft OneDrive to allow customers’ choice of file names.

by egberts1 5y ago

TheChaplain 5y ago
The problem is not OneDrive but Windows and is not easily fixable without breaking backwards compatibility.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  Then they are not trying hard enough
  - viro 5y ago
    Design stuff like this can cause a lot of problems, when you just "fix" them. Just ask Windows enterprise customers how printing has been lately have.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    That may be true for some things, but for example imagine being on the core Windows team in the early 2010s working on the next version of Windows (Windows 10). Given all the baggage of Windows and how committed it is to backwards compatibility, are you going to decide to name the next version of Windows "Windows 9" and deal with the endless deluge of your customer's bemoaning, or are you going to save everyone a lot of headache and just go straight to 10?
    - kzrdude 5y ago
      There was no big downside to skipping 9, so why not do that. Make a decade-long transition plan, I don't care. As long as there is a plan.
    - bonoboTP 5y ago
      What's your point with 9 vs 10? It's just a marketing naming decision.
      - Szpadel 5y ago
        This was technical issue. Windows 9 had issue that a lot of software had checks if this is windows 95/98 by comparing only windows 9 part, this caused in testing that some software was throwing errors on windows 9, that you need something like windows xp
- ahoka 5y ago
  Umm, just mangle it in the storage layer?
Meph504 5y ago
Windows actually has always had a fairly large number of restrictions on filenames and folders, what is really frustrating now is that the impact and restrictions aren't universally validated. For instance you can create a folder that's name ends in a space in most IO libs available on windows, but many file and directory access libs will hard crash on this. They really need to revamp the whole thing, and their efforts in more modern OSes that attempt to virtualizes each apps access seems like a place this would have been a priority, and yet a poorly named file or folder can still cause a Crash to desktop.
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  I recalled some of those issues are related to Explorer.exe. For example, there is a restriction on the path characters, I believe it is 256 characters limit. This includes the directory path that the file is located in. This is the issue with Explorer.exe (I think it was due to Explorer is 32-bit), Windows and the file system does not have this limitation because it can manage them just fine. I remember years ago that I have several windows app that can open the file with absurdly long path name without issue (like IrfanView). If I tried to open the file directly from Explorer, it will refuse to load or it will spew out an error. The restriction was imposed because of Explorer limitation. Now, Explorer can handle the with the long path but it has to be enabled in the registry.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    260 is the typical limit. NTFS allows for 65535 per filename and I think up to 65535 deep on directories (I could be wrong on the second one). Win32 on the other had usually caps everything at 260 total (MAX_FILE_LIMIT). Most of the docs and examples out there use that. I would bet that it is some sort of FAT limitation. This can be annoying if you move a drive between differing OS's and the NTFS bit on the other side does interesting things. NTFS is also case sensitive. But the win32 layer 'hides' it mostly, there is a flag to turn it on. Unless you do something like write from a linux box and you can end up with 2 files named the 'same' but different case. It is also possible to trick windows into doing it but it is tougher.

Please fix Microsoft OneDrive to allow customers’ choice of file names.

TheChaplain 5y ago

The problem is not OneDrive but Windows and is not easily fixable without breaking backwards compatibility.

kzrdude 5y ago
Then they are not trying hard enough
- viro 5y ago
  Design stuff like this can cause a lot of problems, when you just "fix" them. Just ask Windows enterprise customers how printing has been lately have.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  That may be true for some things, but for example imagine being on the core Windows team in the early 2010s working on the next version of Windows (Windows 10). Given all the baggage of Windows and how committed it is to backwards compatibility, are you going to decide to name the next version of Windows "Windows 9" and deal with the endless deluge of your customer's bemoaning, or are you going to save everyone a lot of headache and just go straight to 10?
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    There was no big downside to skipping 9, so why not do that. Make a decade-long transition plan, I don't care. As long as there is a plan.
  - bonoboTP 5y ago
    What's your point with 9 vs 10? It's just a marketing naming decision.
    - Szpadel 5y ago
      This was technical issue. Windows 9 had issue that a lot of software had checks if this is windows 95/98 by comparing only windows 9 part, this caused in testing that some software was throwing errors on windows 9, that you need something like windows xp
ahoka 5y ago
Umm, just mangle it in the storage layer?

Meph504 5y ago

Windows actually has always had a fairly large number of restrictions on filenames and folders, what is really frustrating now is that the impact and restrictions aren't universally validated. For instance you can create a folder that's name ends in a space in most IO libs available on windows, but many file and directory access libs will hard crash on this. They really need to revamp the whole thing, and their efforts in more modern OSes that attempt to virtualizes each apps access seems like a place this would have been a priority, and yet a poorly named file or folder can still cause a Crash to desktop.

Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
I recalled some of those issues are related to Explorer.exe. For example, there is a restriction on the path characters, I believe it is 256 characters limit. This includes the directory path that the file is located in. This is the issue with Explorer.exe (I think it was due to Explorer is 32-bit), Windows and the file system does not have this limitation because it can manage them just fine. I remember years ago that I have several windows app that can open the file with absurdly long path name without issue (like IrfanView). If I tried to open the file directly from Explorer, it will refuse to load or it will spew out an error. The restriction was imposed because of Explorer limitation. Now, Explorer can handle the with the long path but it has to be enabled in the registry.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  260 is the typical limit. NTFS allows for 65535 per filename and I think up to 65535 deep on directories (I could be wrong on the second one). Win32 on the other had usually caps everything at 260 total (MAX_FILE_LIMIT). Most of the docs and examples out there use that. I would bet that it is some sort of FAT limitation. This can be annoying if you move a drive between differing OS's and the NTFS bit on the other side does interesting things. NTFS is also case sensitive. But the win32 layer 'hides' it mostly, there is a flag to turn it on. Unless you do something like write from a linux box and you can end up with 2 files named the 'same' but different case. It is also possible to trick windows into doing it but it is tougher.