Knowledge Base

PRB: GetOpenFileName nMaxFile Interpreted Incorrectly

Article ID: 137194

Article Last Modified on 11/21/2006

Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface, when used with:
- Microsoft Windows 95

This article was previously published under Q137194

SYMPTOMS

In a 16-bit Windows-based application, call GetOpenFileName with a string buffer of 10 characters and set nMaxFile to 10. Double-click a file whose full path name is 10 characters long. The file name is returned and the 11th character in the buffer is set to 0. This is a problem because the application has written beyond the specified length of the buffer.

CAUSE

Windows 3.1 had this same problem, so this behavior was maintained in Windows 95 for compatibility reasons.

RESOLUTION

Applications should make sure that they can handle having this API overwrite one more byte than the size that they passed in.

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

Keywords: kbcmndlg kbcmndlgfileo kbcmndlgsave kbprb KB137194