Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mailrus!husc6!m2c!wpi!ear
From: ear@wpi.wpi.edu (Eric A Rasmussen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer
Subject: Re: How do I make my path bigger?
Message-ID: <9575@wpi.wpi.edu>
Date: 10 Mar 90 22:42:18 GMT
References: <1990Mar10.165143.20886@Octopus.COM> <1941@v7fs1.UUCP> <3124@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Reply-To: ear@wpi.wpi.edu (Eric A Rasmussen)
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester ,MA
Lines: 25

In article <3124@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> consp21@bingsunl.cc.binghamton.edu (Ken Hoover) writes:

>	DOS has a 60-character limit on paths, if I remember correctly.

While you are basically correct, I think you misunderstood the poster's
problem.  There have already been quite a few suggestions posted publically on
how to fix the problem so I will not bother restating any here, but your
explanation does raise an interesting point. 

From what I have experienced, you can actually have a single path be longer
than 60 characters, but you can only access it manually from the dos prompt or
through a batch file.  The problem is that almost no known software can access
a file or directory who's path is longer than 60 characters.  I think Norton's
Change Directory utility might have been able to do it, but I'm not positive. 

This brings me to my question for any MS-DOS gurus out there.  How can you
access paths longer than 60 characters from a piece of software?  A friend of
mine, who is a genius at this type of stuff, was unable to figure it out. 
From what I understood, the machine would hang when a DOS call was made that
tried to access a path longer than 60 characters.  (He was using Turbo-C 2.0)

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