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Naming and Syntax Conventions, and Size Limitations

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This document defines naming and syntax conventions and size limitations for Visual SourceSafe.

Size Limitations

  • User names and label names can be up to 31 characters long.

  • User passwords can be up to 15 characters long.

  • File names can be up to 255 characters long. File names can include spaces on operating systems that support them.

  • Project paths can be up to 259 characters long, including the file name.

  • Project or file labels can be up to 31 characters long.

  • Search strings can be up to 63 characters long.

  • Comments can be up to 63 characters long for the Check Out command, and 4K characters long for other comments.

  • Lines in the Visual SourceSafe initialization files can be up to 511 characters long.

  • Files and projects that are dated together in the Visual SourceSafe database can total no more than 4 billion.

  • Files and projects that are added together in any project of the Visual SourceSafe database can total no more than 8191.

  • The size of a file stored in the Visual SourceSafe database is limited to 2 GB.

  • The number of versions of a specific file that Visual SourceSafe can store is limited to 32,767.

Naming Conventions

Most names in Visual SourceSafe cannot start or end with spaces or tabs and cannot be device names, for example com1. Any character can be used for names or labels, except the following:

  • Dollar sign ($)

  • At sign (@)

  • Angle brackets (< >), brackets ([ ]), braces ({ }), and parentheses (( ))

  • Colon (:) and semicolon (;)

  • Equal sign (=)

  • Caret sign (^)

  • Pipe (vertical bar) (|)

  • Asterisk (*)

  • Exclamation point (!)

  • Forward (/) and backward slash (\)

  • Percent sign (%)

  • Question mark (?)

  • Comma (,)

  • Quotation mark, (single or double (' or ")

  • Tab

  • "…"

Support for Universal Naming Convention (UNC) File Names

Visual SourceSafe supports Universal Naming Convention (UNC) file names. If your network operating system supports UNC path names, you can use them anywhere you specify a path name.

Support for Banyan Vines Network Conventions

Visual SourceSafe does not support the use of @ characters on Banyan Vines networks. Banyan Vines users can access all Visual SourceSafe functionality by using mapped network drive letters.

See Also

Concepts

Requirements for Installing Visual SourceSafe