phobo's std.file is completely broke!

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Friday, 14 September 2018 at 19:42:39 UTC, Josphe Brigmo wrote:
> "It doesn't matter. When I compile a program or DLL in C/C++ 
> and many other languages, I use the Windows headers. These 
> headers define MAX_PATH to 260.
> So the program will have the limit set by compile time, no 
> matter what you do in the OS later on. There is no advantage 
> with this setting for now, except that you now *may* pass long 
> paths to API functions w/o the infamous \\?\ prefix, but you 
> have no guarantee for it.
>
> So to make this have the advantage that some people think it 
> will provide, we'd need:
>
>     wait until the Windows headers (in Visual Studio, or the 
> DDK, or the Platform SDK or whatever) is properly updated, i.e. 
> the runtime libs may take advantage of it
>     wait until MS forces this setting to be enabled all the 
> time, otherwise it's useless when it stays optional
>     not checking any more for the target OS in the application, 
> assuming Win 10 with the mentioned update
>
> The latter will only be the case when an app can't target an 
> Windows version below 10. So all in all it will take years 
> until we get the advantage for standalone applications, and for 
> TC these things don't matter for now anyway.
> "
>
> enum size_t MAX_PATH = 260;

MAX_PATH only applies to static arrays (usually on the stack), 
i.e. code which does this:

void doSomething()
{
     char fileName[MAX_PATH];
     ...
     SomeWindowsAPI(fileName);
}

D almost never does this - instead, it uses dynamically sized 
buffers which fit the entire file name. The only times MAX_PATH 
is used in Phobos is:

- thisExePath (return path to current .exe file)
- tempDir (return path to temporary directory)

Obviously neither of these is related to the problems you're 
seeing.