First you complain there's no limits, and then you call the limits arbitrary?

Sorry, bad wording, I should have written "MS has failed to define a single, universal upper limit for the length of an absolute filename for all API functions in the past."

MAX_PATH has been around for as long I can remember.

And it does not say anything about the maximum length for an absolute filename any more. Even the 32767 chars limit is no real limit, according to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247%28VS.85%29.aspx:

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.

And another quote:

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 might not be able to interpret properly.

And this is the point where the various file APIs really stink.

Alexander