horst wrote:
> On 15.06.2008 13:00, Pegasus (MVP) wrote:
>
>> "horst" <hweXXX13@bluewin.ch> wrote in message
>> news:OBj1WStzIHA.2360@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>>
>>> On 13.06.2008 19:48, h.stroph wrote:
>>>
>>>> In news:%23CmD0zSzIHA.2208@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl,
>>>> horst <hweXXX13@bluewin.ch> typed:
>>>>
>>>>> So I decided to delete it but I got a message telling that it couldn't
>>>>> delete a file because its name was too long.
>>>>> Actually there is a a .htm file whose name is 111 characters long.
>>>>> No way to rename, move or delete it.
>>>>> I got the same error when I tried to delete it in the DOS window.
>>>>> Any suggestion please?
>>>>
>>>> Assuming a file named "somehelluvalongfilenamethatstoolongtotype", in a
>>>> command window take advantage of the legacy 8.3 convention:
>>>>
>>>> dir /x some*
>>>>
>>>> will show you the 8.3 filename e.g. "somehe~1" which you can then
>>>> delete:
>>>>
>>>> del somehe~1
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Dear friends,
>>>
>>> thank you all for your suggestions, though none did work.
>>> But luckily I realized that while the name of the file was only(!)
>>> 111 characters long, the whole path was 160 characters long!
>>> i.e. 160+111=271 way more than the maximum allowed length (260)!
>>> Although the calculation is more complex as shown in
>>> http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2005/12/15/504240.aspx (only
>>> for those who really want to enter into the details of the matter!)
>>> And so I renamed the 160 character long path to just
>>> C:\a\b\c\d\e\f\g\h\i\j\k\ and then I was able to delete the file and
>>> the whole path!
>>> Thank you again
>>> Horst
>>
>>
>> John's suggestion would have worked very nicely, provided that
>> you access the "undeletable" file from drive X:, not from drive C:.
>>
> I was just curious to see if you are right: I recreated the file
> (restoring it from a backup) and used John's suggestion.
> Actually the command
> SUBST x: /d
> just eliminates the path x: but not its content.
> So I tried in the DOS window (as it is not accepted in the command line)
> DEL p:\*.*
> and it worked IMHO only because the total length of the path+file name
> was now reduced to about 111 characters.
Maybe I should have given more instructions in my post. When I said
"delete the file from the substituted drive" it meant to navigate to
drive X: and try deleting the file there, or from a command prompt to
use X: for the path (del X:\filename.ext). SUBST x: /d was meant to
tell you how to remove the substituted drive after you were done,
deleting a substituted drive doesn't remove its contents.
And by the way, the so-called "long filename" always includes the path,
hence why I suggested substituting the drive, as you had said that the
actual filename (without the path) was only 111 characters, the problem
had to be the length of the path and by using the subst command the path
was reduced to 3 characters. Had you said that the actual name was
greater than 255 characters I would have suggested a different method,
using the subst command would not have sufficiently reduce the filename
length.
John