[Box Backup] Delete files with a dot at the end under Windows

Achim boxbackup at boxbackup.org
Thu May 7 10:03:12 BST 2009


Hello list:

In my experiments with international filenames (unfortunately not much
progress to report, still very very broken), Box Backup or Boxi managed to
create a file that had an invalid filename under Windows
("d:\testdir\testfile."), because it ended in a dot.

Every intent to delete that file (rename, overwrite, delete) with
Windows-internal tools failed, until I discovered this post [1] that
mentions that prefixing the path like so "\\?\d:\testdir\testfile." will
make the file deletable with the standard del command.

At the same time, the post states a very interesting difference that might
be handy for Box Backup, namely that "NTFS actually allows file paths up to
32K but Windows restricts file paths to no more than 260 characters
(MAX_PATH)."

Just wanted so share that finding in case somebody else is having a similar
problem.

Have a nice day, Achim

[1]
<http://blog.dotsmart.net/2008/06/12/solved-cannot-read-from-the-source-file-or-disk/>



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