Re: Bug in WinNT 4.0 SP4

[paul.gracy () COMPGEN COM (Paul Gracy)]

I must disagree.  Any action that a program takes that can crash a server is
a bug.  Period.

The fact that properly using the SDK and following all the 'rules of
microsoft' would prevent the crash is not an excuse.  When the application
tries to do something that would cause a crash, the OS should whack the
offender's knuckles (see Dr. Watson), not curl up and die.

I am tired of bad code being given excuses.  If MS wants to run large,
mission-critical / business-critical systems, they should fix their code.

IMHO.

=========================
Paul H. Gracy
paul.gracy () compgen com
phone: 404 705 2873
#include <std.disclaimer>
=========================


> -----Original Message-----
> From: David LeBlanc [SMTP:dleblanc () MINDSPRING COM]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 10:12 AM
> To:   BUGTRAQ () netspace org
> Subject:      Re: Bug in WinNT 4.0 SP4
>
> At 03:15 PM 4/19/99 +-200, Alvaro Gilabert wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I supose it is a bug and I will explain why do I think so
> > You can exceed the limit in the number of chars allowed in a filename.
> WinNT does allow it. You can move a folder to a deeper one exceeding it.
>
> That's because the limit isn't where you think it is.  From the
> documentation on CreateFile in the SDK:
>
> Windows NT: You can use paths longer than MAX_PATH characters by calling
> the wide (W) version of CreateFile and prepending "\\?\" to the path. The
> "\\?\" tells the function to turn off path parsing. This lets you use
> paths
> that are nearly 32,000 Unicode characters long. You must use
> fully-qualified paths with this technique. This also works with UNC names.
> The "\\?\" is ignored as part of the path. For example,
> "\\?\C:\myworld\private" is seen as "C:\myworld\private", and
> "\\?\UNC\tom_1\hotstuff\coolapps" is seen as "\\tom_1\hotstuff\coolapps".
> ===============================
>
> So it seems that if you use the APIs properly, you can deal with extremely
> long paths.  When you move things around, it is very likely that you are
> dealing with relative names, not absolute names.
>
>
> David LeBlanc
> dleblanc () mindspring com