My understanding of the limits are:

1) The buffer for the pathname you're trying to access is 255 characters ling (remember everything is C-ish, so that extra character slot is for the terminating '0'), so static is right in that there are 254 useful characters. If the path is relative, then you have an additional 254 characters of path name space available for the name. So go to the directory and back up those long filenames; if you start at C:, you're doomed.

2) Windows

HTH




(No, that 2nd one wasn't a typo...)