phobo's std.file is completely broke!

[Josphe Brigmo]

On Saturday, 15 September 2018 at 10:48:10 UTC, Vladimir 
Panteleev wrote:
> 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.

You are missing the point, MAX_PATH is more than just phobos. 
It's built in to the windows design. Windows enforces it.

All ansi api calls are limited by MAX_PATH.

The way to fix it is to use the wide api calls which are not 
limited or to use other tricks.

Phobos *NEEDS* to be modified to work with these newer OS's.

You wouldn't like it if phobos limit something that it didn't 
need that you would use, would you?

File operations are so common that this stuff is relevant to all 
that use windows(and some that don't).