[TriLUG] question on maximum path length or file name

[Alan Porter]

> I'm trying to figure out how long a filename can be or how deeply a file
> can be nested in terms of the length of the path to get to it. A stat -f
> / on my system tells me that Namelen equals 255. I assume that this
> means a file cannot have a length of more that 255 characters but does
> that include the path to get to that file? I haven't found anything of
> help so far with google.


On an ext2/ext3 filesystem, there is a limitation of the length of a
single filename within a directory (since the directory is really just a
table of names and inodes).

But there is no limitation on the entire path of the file (like the limit
in DOS), since that information is really only stored in a hop-by-hop
manner in the directories above the file.

Individual programs might have a limit on the number of characters in a
file's complete path, but that is not a limitation of the filesystem
itself.

Hope this helps.

Alan





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