Unfortunately I have been unable to get any of the suggested solutions to work. I appreciate all the help. I didn’t think this would be so tough.

If you still want help, you are going to have to be more specific than that.

I tested my 2019-03-01T14:22:23.197Z post pretty thoroughly, and it worked exactly as I expected, passing chrome the full URL.

So, things we will need to know in order to keep helping you:

1. What browser do you want the URL to go to? Chrome? Firefox? Edge? IE? Something else?
   • If it’s Chrome or Firefox or , we will need the full path to your browser: you should be able to right click on your browser shortcut (or, if it’s active on your toolbar, right click on the icon, then again on the application name) to get you to the Properties window, and copy the full path there.
   • If it’s Edge or IE, we’ll use the Microsoft-special notation for accessing those browsers. 'coz microsoft.
2. What is the exact version of Notepad++ you are using? Maybe your version is behaving differently than mine
   • it would be easiest if you went to the menu ? > Debug Info > Copy debug info into clipboard, and pasted the results here.
3. what exact sequence did you use when editing the shortcuts.xml?
4. exactly how long is your URL?
5. Did you try my exact circumstance from my 2019-03-01T14:22:23.197Z post, or did you make changes to the URL before saving the batch file?
   • when I did that setup, making sure to save the setup, exit Notepad++, and then reload, it sent the really long URL to chrome properly
   • if you did try this, with the DUMMY URL, how exactly did it fail? (saying “didn’t work” is so generic as to be useless for helping us help you)
     • Did it not try to do anything? If so, where exactly did you save longurl.bat? Did you make the shortcuts.xml point to the real location of longurl.bat, or did you leave it pointing to my location for longurl.bat
     • Did it not open chrome?
     • Did it open chrome and try to go to the full dummy URL, and fail because it didn’t exist? This is what I would expect. In which case, I would say it didn’t fail, because that was the expected behavior.
     • Or did open chrome, but truncate the URL?

       • Once I made the batch file, it never truncated the URL on me.

       • I just tried 2138 characters in the dummy URL, plus the %1 search string in my batch file, which got replaced by $(CURRENT_WORD) from Notepad++, which was the exact text longurl, and chrome tried to open that page with the full 2144 character URL; because that machine doesn’t exist, chrome told me this site can't be reached, but it actually tried to go there, and the full URL was in the browser bar. If I change my batch file to

         "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" "https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&sen=012&q=%1"
         pause
         

       so that it’s going to a valid website (google search), a total of 2106 characters plus the search string long, plus has a pause so that a cmd.exe window stays open until you hit enter or space or something, I saw the full URL in the cmd.exe window, I saw the full URL in chrome, and chrome went to the google-search for the word (longurl) that I highlighted when I launched

Do you see how detailed I was when trying to help you? If you are detailed when responding to our help, it will be easier for us to help you.

Please answer all five of those questions. Also, tell me an exact path where you are willing to save longurl.bat. With those five answers (detailed), and with an exact path, I should be able to craft something that works for you. I will start with the big long dummy google search, so that you know it’s really working… but after that, depending on how much info you give, I might be able to help you convert the URL closer toward what you want in real life.

I wanted to say that without knowing the real address of the site to find a solution to this problem can not be.

yes i know, but somehow this topic has caught our interest.

I didn’t want to insult anyone …

don’t worry, i can not see anything insulting. google translator did not add any hidden insults to your text ;-)

@andrecool-68

the url that the original poster needs is very long.
it is so long, that it gets cut off and shortened.
the resulting url is incomplete at his browser’s address bar.
(his browser gets only a part of the complete url address that is necessary for the search to work.)

now we just have to sit and wait, because the original poster has not yet replied to peter’s last suggestion on how he could work around this url string length restriction.

Based on the thread as a whole, I am confident we have provided enough information for @Cary-Korn to know where in the URL the $(CURRENT_WORD) needs to go (ie, in the place of the “str=test” in the example dummy URL that @Cary-Korn provided), regardless of what search engine is used. If @Cary-Korn obfuscated the real URL being used, I am working under the assumption that there will be no difficulty un-obfuscating the URL back to something that is functional.

The problem being asked about in this thread was not “what is the right URL for such-and-such a search engine?” The question was how to transmit said URL to the browser without the end being cut off. That’s the problem I attacked, and has worked in my tests of my solution.

Maybe I’m dumb here, but why wouldn’t all sites do it differently? I mean, they could do it the same way (sometimes “standards” develop by imitation), but…

I was just using the OP’s dummy query, which was obfuscated to prevent us from knowing what site they were actually searching. (My guess is it is one of the services that provides cloud-based services for corporations, and the OP was trying to obscure which one.)

Given that the root cause of the problem was not the website, but the interface between Notepad++, Windows, and the browser, it doesn’t bother me that the OP used a dummy website (though really, using the .example top-level domain is a better choice than trying to fake a .com; you never know when creating a dummy URL with a legal-style domain will accidentally intersect with a real machine).

The fake URL given was sufficient to show us the problem; and using that fake URL, I was able to present a solution that would allow the entire more-than-260-character URL to be passed to the browser, so it was a reasonable choice.

I tried the .bat option and it looks like it still cuts off the url. It will not take the highlight search term and parse it into the url. I though this was going to be an easy thing.

It would have been easy, except you’re dealing with the interface between an application and windows and another application; there are some things that are out of your control.

However, I think I found a .bat variant that will work.

Create a batchfile at a known location (I made mine as c:\usr\local\scripts\longurl.bat), containing the single line

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" "https://test.my.testforce.com/_ui/search/ui/UnifiedSearchResults?searchType=2&sen=a0T&sen=0WO&sen=a0W&sen=ka&sen=00O&sen=00P&sen=a0b&sen=00T&sen=015&sen=00U&sen=a4j&sen=a1F&sen=a0h&sen=00a&sen=a1S&sen=0F9&sen=a1U&sen=08p&sen=a1X&sen=a3c&sen=02s&sen=001&sen=068&sen=003&sen=500&sen=005&sen=501&sen=006&sen=a6M&sen=a0L&sen=a0M&str=%1"

The first part is the full path to the chrome browser, in quotes (because of the spaces in the path); the second part is all of the long url, except the search term; use the %1 instead of the search term. (If you don’t want to use chrome, use the full path to your browser executable of choice.)

Second, edit shortcuts.xml and add

    <Command name="longurl" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="116">c:\usr\local\scripts\longurl.bat $(CURRENT_WORD)</Command>

(making sure to use your batchfile path, not mine.)

Save, exit Notepad++, reload. Highlight a word (I highlighted TestString) and hit Alt+F5 (which is the alias I used in the command above): this properly opened chrome with the full URL, including the search string; because it was a dummy URL, it didn’t go anywhere, but chrome displayed the full URL through the end of the TestString, which is something that hadn’t happened in my previous experiments.

if it does not even work from a .bat or .cmd with the length of your url, i suppose it is beyond of anything that can be started from a command line.

if this url is that long, you could try to run it through the windows explorer api, by creating a link shortcut (.lnk file) by right clicking on your desktop, and creating new > shortcut, with the parameters "path_to_your\browser.exe" "https://your_long_url"

if your url would work from a desktop shortcut (.lnk), you could use a script, or one of the available exe tools on the internet, to create a .lnk file programmatically.

just a thought, to get the line shorter within notepad++:

can you perform a search from a test.cmd batch file ?
if yes, you can try to call your_path_to\test.cmd $(CURRENT_WORD) or your_path_to\test.cmd "$(CURRENT_WORD)" inside shortcuts.xml, to keep the notepad++ executable line as short as possible.

shortcuts.xml example:

<Command name="test" Ctrl="no" Alt="no" Shift="no" Key="0">C:\Users\user\test.cmd $(CURRENT_WORD)</Command>

inside the batch file $(CURRENT_WORD) will be reflected as %1

I guess you are on the right track. I assume the underlying create process is the culprit.
As stated on msdn

The maximum length of this string is 32,768 characters, including the Unicode terminating null character.
If lpApplicationName is NULL, the module name portion of lpCommandLine is limited to MAX_PATH characters.

I was curious, so I followed these directions to create a fake URL protocol/scheme (“alert:xxx”), but I just passed it to cmd /c "echo %1 && pause". After refreshing my login, I then updated shortcuts.xml to add an Run > alert using Alt+F5:

    <Command name="alert" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="116">alert:$(CURRENT_WORD)</Command>

When running that, with the text 123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x123456789x selected, it stops at 259 characters, including the alert: protocol prefix. I hadn’t realized that the 260-character limitation would apply to commands as well as filenames.

I haven’t found anywhere where there’s a 260+/-1 hardcoded in Notepad++ source code that would influence this (one of the Lexers apparently hardcodes a 260-character limit in one of its buffers, but none others that appeared to deal with strings), so maybe it’s really in the libraries that NPP chose to handoff to windows, or something.

Adding a command-based rather than URL-based:

    <Command name="alertcmd" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="118">cmd /c "echo $(CURRENT_WORD) && pause"</Command>

I successfully passed that up to 2047 characters in $(CURRENT_WORD).

With that in mind, and the launch in browser syntax, I created

     <Command name="cmdurl" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="119">chrome file:$(CURRENT_WORD)"</Command>

which launches chrome with the given file: URL. I was able to pass it 2047 characters no problem

So edit cmdurl to the @Cary-Korn’s original long-URL example, with proper &-entities:

     <Command name="cmdurl" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="119">chrome https://test.my.testforce.com/_ui/search/ui/UnifiedSearchResults?searchType=2&amp;sen=a0T&amp;sen=0WO&amp;sen=a0W&amp;sen=ka&amp;sen=00O&amp;sen=00P&amp;sen=a0b&amp;sen=00T&amp;sen=015&amp;sen=00U&amp;sen=a4j&amp;sen=a1F&amp;sen=a0h&amp;sen=00a&amp;sen=a1S&amp;sen=0F9&amp;sen=a1U&amp;sen=08p&amp;sen=a1X&amp;sen=a3c&amp;sen=02s&amp;sen=001&amp;sen=068&amp;sen=003&amp;sen=500&amp;sen=005&amp;sen=501&amp;sen=006&amp;sen=a6M&amp;sen=a0L&amp;sen=a0M&amp;str=$(CURRENT_WORD)</Command>

When I did that, it hit a limit of the ~260 characters again. (Though, this time, instead of clipping, it wrapped around and started the URL over for a few more characters; it was weird). I think that the way that command-line arguments are being sent to ShellExecute, and/or how ShellExecute is handling them, is limiting the argument to a command to be ~260 characters.

With google translate I wasn’t able to get a proper result using it this way
but have to admit that I haven’t used it for quite some time now.
And if used in the normal way, it always made me feel that there is something wrong.
But who knows, maybe it is much better nowadays.

Don’t let my laziness of letting the xml-parser handle my malformed XML corrupt you into to taking shortcuts. I don’t use XML for more than editing config files here and elsewhere, and such applications often follow the adage “Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept” (Postel’s Law). If I were writing XML for a living, I’d be much more strict in any XML example I gave. It’s best to always use entities for those 5 characters in XML when you are writing XML.

fluent English !? :-D - thanks to deepl

Ok - finally, I guess, I’ve understood.
The limit you’ve discovered is near to 260 which is a known limit for path length, as far as I remember.
I read that in Win10 this limit has been eliminated but if it is set in source …
Thx for the hint about the xml parser, I wasn’t aware that this is even possible.
I always thought escaping these 5 special chars is a must have.
Learned something new :-)

Sorry, your English here is so fluent, I forget it’s not your native language.

Regarding escaping ampersands in XML: yes, technically, the ampersands should be escaped (made into & entities) in the XML. However, many XML parsers realize that it’s not an entity once they get to the = without having come across a valid entity name, and so decide that the &sel= was meant as literal text rather than as an attempt at a named entity. My experiment above, where the URL was the same (whether the &sel= were raw or &sel=) seems to indicate that the XML-parser that Notepad++ is using implements the fallback condition rather than complaining that it cannot parse the XML.

Regarding the length: Yes, I think there’s a limit to how long the command can be. I’m not sure how else to interpret the experiments I did with dummy.example, which didn’t use any ampersands, but show the URL getting truncated by the time it reaches the browser. I don’t know whether the limit is

• when reading the XML file – I don’t think so, because the truncated length seemed to be the same whether I used raw & or entity & in the XML file
• sometime after converting the entities into plain text inside Notepad++ – I think this is more likely, though where that “somewhere” is would be more complicated
• sometime between when Notepad++ sends the URL to the browser and the browser receives it – this is also possible
• windows is truncating it in the between-time
• the browser (in my experiment, chrome) has a limit as to how many characters it accepts from whatever mechanism it receives the URL from windows

I may have to look into the code, and/or try some more experiments, to try to pin down where the problem lies.