Note File I/O functions in the Windows API convert "/" to "\" as part of converting the name to an NT-style name, except when using the "\\?\" prefix as detailed in the following sections.
The Windows API has many functions that also have Unicode versions to permit an extended-length path for a maximum total path length of 32,767 characters. This type of path is composed of components separated by backslashes, each up to the value returned in the
lpMaximumComponentLength parameter of the
GetVolumeInformation function (this value is commonly 255 characters). To specify an extended-length path, use the "\\?\" prefix. For example, "\\?\D:\
very long path".
Note The maximum path of 32,767 characters is approximate, because the "\\?\" prefix may be expanded to a longer string by the system at run time, and this expansion applies to the total length.
The "\\?\" prefix can also be used with paths constructed according to the universal naming convention (UNC). To specify such a path using UNC, use the "\\?\UNC\" prefix. For example, "\\?\UNC\server\share", where "server" is the name of the computer and "share" is the name of the shared folder. These prefixes are not used as part of the path itself. They indicate that the path should be passed to the system with minimal modification, which means that you cannot use forward slashes to represent path separators, or a period to represent the current directory, or double dots to represent the parent directory. Because you cannot use the "\\?\" prefix with a relative path, relative paths are always limited to a total of
MAX_PATH characters.
There is no need to perform any Unicode normalization on path and file name strings for use by the Windows file I/O API functions because the file system treats path and file names as an opaque sequence of
WCHARs. Any normalization that your application requires should be performed with this in mind, external of any calls to related Windows file I/O API functions.
When using an API to create a directory, the specified path cannot be so long that you cannot append an 8.3 file name (that is, the directory name cannot exceed
MAX_PATH minus 12).
The shell and the file system have different requirements. It is possible to create a path with the Windows API that the shell user interface is not able to interpret properly.
Namespaces
There are two main categories of namespace conventions used in the Windows APIs, commonly referred to as
NT namespaces and the
Win32 namespaces. The NT namespace was designed to be the lowest level namespace on which other subsystems and namespaces could exist, including the Win32 subsystem and, by extension, the Win32 namespaces. POSIX is another example of a subsystem in Windows that is built on top of the NT namespace. Early versions of Windows also defined several predefined, or reserved, names for certain special devices such as communications (serial and parallel) ports and the default display console as part of what is now called the NT device namespace, and are still supported in current versions of Windows for backward compatibility.
Win32 File Namespaces
The Win32 namespace prefixing and conventions are summarized in this section and the following section, with descriptions of how they are used. Note that these examples are intended for use with the Windows API functions and do not all necessarily work with Windows shell applications such as Windows Explorer. For this reason there is a wider range of possible paths than is usually available from Windows shell applications, and Windows applications that take advantage of this can be developed using these namespace conventions.
For file I/O, the "\\?\" prefix to a path string tells the Windows APIs to disable all string parsing and to send the string that follows it straight to the file system. For example, if the file system supports large paths and file names, you can exceed the
MAX_PATH limits that are otherwise enforced by the Windows APIs. For more information about the normal maximum path limitation, see the previous section
Maximum Path Length Limitation.
Because it turns off automatic expansion of the path string, the "\\?\" prefix also allows the use of ".." and "." in the path names, which can be useful if you are attempting to perform operations on a file with these otherwise reserved relative path specifiers as part of the fully qualified path.
Many but not all file I/O APIs support "\\?\"; you should look at the reference topic for each API to be sure.
