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What does a leading "\??\" on a windows path mean? [duplicate]

When using GetModuleFileNameEx to query the image path of a running process, some processes have an image path that starts with "\??\". For example, while most processes start "C:\WINDOWS", some processes start "\??\C:\WINDOWS".

What does the leading \??\ mean on a windows path?

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kdt Avatar asked Apr 15 '10 09:04

kdt


1 Answers

It's a Unicode extended-length pathname - see Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces in MSDN (the "Maximum Path Length Limitation" section).

(By the way, do you mean \\?\ rather than \??\?)

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RichieHindle Avatar answered Nov 05 '22 11:11

RichieHindle