But you need to use the "UNC syntax" (\\?\...) to avail yourself of the extended length.

In addition to using the "UNC syntax", one needs to use CreateFileW according to the documentation. It's my understanding that open uses CreateFileA, so Win32API::File or similar is required.

Correct. It used to be that Perl supported (some) wide file apis, but they got dropped in order to support unicode on other platforms.

If you want to create a totally impractical path with 32k chars, compile and run this. (WARNING: It is a bitch to delete!)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>

wchar_t path[ 32768 ] = L"\\\\?\\c:\\1234567890\\";
wchar_t name[] = L"1234567890\\";

int main( int argc, char **argv ) {

    while( CreateDirectoryW( path, NULL ) ) {
         wcscat( path, name );
    };

     printf( "Error %d\n", GetLastError() );;
}
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