February 2010 | Page 4 of 4 | The Old New Thing

What is the maximum length of an environment variable?

Raymond ChenFebruary 3, 2010Feb 3, 201002/3/10

A customer noticed that environment variables were being truncated at 2047 characters and wanted to know what the maximum length of an environment variable is. This is one of those cases where you can answer the customer's question or you can try to answer the question the customer is really asking. If you just answer the question, you're ...

It appears that car park computers revert to their native language, German, when placed under stress

Raymond ChenFebruary 2, 2010Feb 2, 201002/2/10

A car park in Birmingham switches from English to German in times of stress. That reminded me that over a decade ago, a colleague of mine noticed an error message on the screen at the exit to the parking garage at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The way the airport works, you pick up a ticket as you enter, and you pay your parking ...

Microspeak: Future-proofing

Raymond ChenFebruary 2, 2010Feb 2, 201002/2/10

It has been famously said that England and the United States are two countries separated by a common language. The same holds true for Microspeak. In the Redmond dialect of Microspeak, we talk about extensibility: Designing a system with specific points where features can be added in the future, often by outside parties. For example, an ...

It looks a little like CMD except there is white on the background

Raymond ChenFebruary 1, 2010Feb 1, 201002/1/10

Surely by now you've seen the video where NextGenHacker101 shows you how to use the "Tracer T" program to view "how many IP's are looking at Google", their name, and connection speed (to then to then to then). (And commenter squizz explains why it "worked" in spite of the http prefix.) But more awesome is the fact that...

Why can't I use the linker to delay-load a function from kernel32?

Raymond ChenFebruary 1, 2010Feb 1, 201002/1/10

For some time (I am too lazy to look up when it was introduced), the Visual Studio linker has supported a feature known as delay-loading. But why can't you use this feature to delay-load a function from kernel32? It would be very handy: If you write the program fails to load on versions of Windows which do not support the function Xyz ...

The Old New Thing

February 2010 | Page 4 of 4 | The Old New Thing

What is the maximum length of an environment variable?

It appears that car park computers revert to their native language, German, when placed under stress

Microspeak: Future-proofing

It looks a little like CMD except there is white on the background

Why can't I use the linker to delay-load a function from kernel32?

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