File name: field too short.

Looks like we may be able to blow by 255 characters.
I took a look at teh database design, and everything appears to be safe for this fix.

1. Open fieldfield_paths.module.
2. Go to line 31,
   

           'file_name' => array(
             '#type' => 'textfield',
             '#title' => t('File name'),
     

3. Change '#type' => 'textfield', to '#type'=>'textarea'.
4. Save and exit.

WARNING:
If you're using CKEditor, or any WYSIWYG that replaces textareas, you'll need to turn OFF this field definition.
By ignoring it, you will accidentally get html in your filenames!

My suggested exclusion rule is this:

admin/content/node-type/*/fields/field_file.*

EDIT:

Tested a retroactive update against ~15 items. Worked like a charm.

Further testing and development will be needed to prevent filename problems.

I recently discovered if a stray line break ("\n") is present, it will cause FileField_Paths to break your tokenized path. The result is a WARNING when saving your content, and your file will be saved as: <file-name>_n_y.<file-extension>.

Where "n" is the duplication number (0 for first time, 1 for second ... etc), and y (is the duplication of the duplication number). If left unchecked, I presume this could continue exponentially.....
_n_y_n_y_n_y_n_y .... and so on.

I don't think its a serious issue. Especially if the module maintainer filters the textarea's contents.

As a MySQL Developer myself, I understand your concern. Basically, you don't want incorrect data slipping into your database. The database field for your FileField_Paths instance is actually of type MediumText, which allots enough space for all of this data anyway.

It has not happened to me--even when I discovered the flaw in my code change. I assume other modules like: FileField (required here anyways), ImageCache or the ImageAPI module catches the filesystem error before committing the change to the database. Instead of saving your mistake, the filename is logically corrected and saved that way instead.

Because Windows, Unix, Linux, etc... filesystems allow 255 (and some longer) filenames, you could really squeeze every character out of your file renames with a textarea. Not to mention, its way easier for site administrators to read!

Maybe the idea is to utilize a textarea, and using another field, replace line breaks ("\n") with your choice of "-","_","+", or other character?

I'd really hope to hear from our illustrious maintainer soon on this!

Since I didn't know how to create a patch before ... here's the patch now!