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Re: Maximum name length for MacOS Extended?




On Dec 29, 2007, at 1:35 PM, Andre-John Mas wrote:

Hi,

I am trying to move a file from my main drive to my external HD, both of which are
"Mac OS Extended (Jornaled)" but it is failing. The file name is 51 characters long:


 5 - Oxygene XII - Concert Theatre Marigny 2007.mp4

But when I copy from the Finder I am told the name is too long for the destination.
If I try with the cp command


mv /5\ -\ Oxygene\ XII\ -\ Concert\ Theatre\ Marigny\ 2007.mp4 .

I get:

mv: ./5 - Oxygene XII - Concert Theatre Marigny 2007.mp4: Invalid argument

What I don't understand is that the file name limit is meant to be 255 characters
and the file is already present on a disk of the same type.


Any ideas?

From a shell prompt, I would cd to the destination disk. Just as an experiment, I would do:


touch '5 - Oxygene XII - Concert Theatre Marigny 2007.mp4'

note the single quotes. No backslashes are needed. See if you get an error with the touch. (touch, in this case, will simply create an empty file with that name.)

If the touch works, then the error that you are getting is misleading. I just did it on my laptop and it worked. It is formatted with Mac OS Extended (Jornaled) as well. If the touch does not work, then I would redouble my check to make sure the destination disk is formatted like you think it is.

Probably experimenting around with touch might lead you to figure out what is really wrong.

As far as getting around the problem, if the touch works, then I would copy the file (don't move it) and you can rename it on the copy. e.g.

cp '/source/5 - Oxygene XII - Concert Theatre Marigny 2007.mp4' 'dest/ temp.mp4'

Then move the new to the new name

cd dest
mv temp.mp4 '5 - Oxygene XII - Concert Theatre Marigny 2007.mp4'

I would use single quotes and not backslashes. It just seems easier to me.

Once it is where you want it with the name that you want it, then delete the source copy. Move of a file from one file system to the other essentially does this same sequence. Maybe you do not have permission to delete the source copy or something like that. It sounds like the invalid argument is coming from someplace unexpected.

Good luck
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 >Maximum name length for MacOS Extended? (From: Andre-John Mas <email@hidden>)



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