I envy newbies

Tim Peters tim_one at email.msn.com
Sat Jul 17 15:30:32 EDT 1999


[Tim]
> I think the best advice you can give a newbie regardless is to force the
> install to put Python in a directory *they* choose, and one without
> spaces in its name.  Like C:\Python.  ..

[Aahz]
> The one thing I *hate* about this advice is that it's a Bad Idea to put
> too many files/directories into the root.  (I *think* FAT-32 gets rid of
> the 64-entry limitation, but I'm not sure, and anyone on Win95 or NT has
> a decent chance of being on FAT-16.  But even without the limitation, I
> still think it's a Bad Idea.)

FAT32 and NTFS don't care.  FAT16 actually has room for 512 entries,
although files/folders with "non-8.3 names" consume more than one entry.
Details at e.g.

    http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q120/1/38.asp

You're right that you *can* get in trouble creating a file in a FAT16 root;
I do it routinely, though (well, just folders, not files), but I won't be
close to getting in trouble before I install about 300 more programs there
<wink>.

each-windows-user-finds-a-unique-way-to-survive-ly y'rs  - tim






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