The following table identifies the size limits for the various registry elements.
| Registry Element | Size Limit |
|---|
| Key name | 255 characters |
| Value name | 16,383 charactersWindows 2000: 260 ANSI characters or 16,383 Unicode characters.
|
| Value | Available memory (latest format) 1 MB (standard format)
|
| Tree | A registry tree can be 512 levels deep. You can create up to 32 levels at a time through a single registry API call. |
Long values (more than 2,048 bytes) should be stored in a file, and the location of the file should be stored in the registry. This helps the registry perform efficiently.
The file location can be the name of a value or the data of a value. Each backslash in the location string must be preceded by another backslash as an escape character. For example, specify "C:\\mydir\\myfile" to store the string "C:\mydir\myfile". A file location can also be the name of a key if it is within the 255-character limit for key names and does not contain backslashes, which are not allowed in key names.
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Build date: 11/19/2009