That smells like a DOS limit, not a Perl limit. Under WinNT and later, you can use paths like "//?/e:/..." or "//?/UNC/server1/e/users/..." to turn off path parsing to use paths larger than 260 characters. But I don't think there is a way to do that for chdir() -- just via CreateFile() (see Win32API::File).

But File::Find itself has no limitations.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

/\/\averick

According to my linux/limits.h, the maximum number of characters is 4095, not 255.

You're right. It's 255 for the max filename and 4095 for the max pathname. I was thinking they were the same size for some reason...

/\/\averick

Here is the way simplified code. File::Find won't open a directory over 260 characters (it looks like an O/S limitation - thanks, everyone). I've tried putting if length statements into Wanted, but by then it is too late. I've tried wrapping the find function in an eval, but then it's too early.

What I want it to do is if it hits a directory over 255 characters, do a next or something. I want it to stick its head in the sand, and clap its hands over its little PERL ears and ignore the error.

Any ideas?

use File::Find;

$dir1="//server01/x\$/users/userguy";
print "finding media files on $dir1\.\.\.\n";
find(\&wanted, $dir1);
sub wanted {
    if (!("$File::Find::dir"=~/}/)&&(/mp3$|avi$|exe$|mpg$|wav$|zip$/i)
+){
        print "$File::Find::dir/$_\n";
        }
    
}
[download]

Thanks for the help.