Fix: Remove long file and folder names in Window 11

I’ve had many tools create extra long file names, by the time you include the path. If you try to delete this using the DEL command in Windows, you’ll see an error.

The system cannot find the path specified

In particular, I’ve seen this with Visual Studio, and when I’ve used Git to clone repositories into folders.

If you run into this, the easiest way to deal with it is to:

• Open a bash shell in Windows
• Use the rm -rf command to remove the long folders. (Don’t forget to use forward slashes in the path name as it’s a Unix style shell)

To open a bash shell in Windows, you can use either Git Bash (part of the Git for Windows package) or the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

This will let you remove files or folders with long names.

2025-04-02