PATH limitation

[Edward Diener]

I was amazed to find out that the total length of the PATH environment
variable is still approximately 1000 characters in Windows 2000, after which
the user path gets ignored if the total length goes over this amount. This
was a serious problem for all the years of NT and it has been propagated
through Windows 2000.

Is there a way around this limitation in Windows 2000 ?
Has this been fixed in Windows XP so that the PATH variable length is
unlimited and can be dynamically expanded ?
Why is it so hard for MS to fix this simple problem so that the PATH length
is never truncated no matter how long it is ?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I was amazed to find out that the total length of the PATH environment
variable is still approximately 1000 characters in Windows 2000, after which
the user path gets ignored if the total length goes over this amount. This
was a serious problem for all the years of NT and it has been propagated
through Windows 2000.

Is there a way around this limitation in Windows 2000 ?
Has this been fixed in Windows XP so that the PATH variable length is
unlimited and can be dynamically expanded ?
Why is it so hard for MS to fix this simple problem so that the PATH length
is never truncated no matter how long it is ?

I suspect that the designers of this piece of code considered that
a path length exceeding 1000 chars might be fairly useless, because
of the sheer number of folders that would have to be searched each
time the user invoked a program with a name that was not fully qualified.
Why not embed a fully qualified path name in your shortcuts, and speed
up your system at the same time?

 

[Edward Diener]

I suspect that the designers of this piece of code considered that
a path length exceeding 1000 chars might be fairly useless, because
of the sheer number of folders that would have to be searched each
time the user invoked a program with a name that was not fully
qualified. Why not embed a fully qualified path name in your
shortcuts, and speed up your system at the same time?

Why not just design an operating system where the PATH length can be
unlimited ? Believe it or not, not only do many programs still get executed
from the command line but many installations have shared libraries whose DLL
directory(s) need to be on the PATH. I shouldn't have to repeat how many
times programs get installed and then no longer work because they have
exceeded the PATH length attempting to add their exe and shared library
directories to the PATH.

In these days of multi-gigaherz CPUs the excuse that many different
directories must be searched is a bit pathetic. I think it is time for the
Windows designers to grow up a little regarding the PATH envirionment
variable. It is not 1993 anymore, nor should it take 10 years to figure out
that the PATH environment variable should essentially be unlimited.

 

[Torgeir Bakken (MVP)]

I was amazed to find out that the total length of the PATH environment
variable is still approximately 1000 characters in Windows 2000, after which
the user path gets ignored if the total length goes over this amount. This
was a serious problem for all the years of NT and it has been propagated
through Windows 2000.

Is there a way around this limitation in Windows 2000 ?
No.


Has this been fixed in Windows XP so that the PATH variable length is
unlimited and can be dynamically expanded ?

No.