Description truncation?

I am using llSetObjectDesc to store a string that I know is about 400 characters in a prim's description property. After retrieving the description with llGetObjectDesc, I found that I was having problems finding substrings with llSubStringIndex in the higher ranges of the string. So I did a llStringLength on the retrieved description and it is returning 255.

Just to be sure I didn't screw something up before setting the description, I did an llStringLength on the string before the call to llSetObjectDesc and it returned 400.

The wiki says the description property size is 8034. Am I missing something?

I think it is truncated to 255 by any action such as editing, rezzing etc. I have never trusted it past the 255 point.

Wow, that's weird. It seems like I've seen a number of discusions about the description being a great place to store data. Maybe I missed the part about a 255 limit

Thanks, ed

Yes, I saw the part about the 255 limit for llSay and the 127 limit for what the text box on the prim edit window displays. But I figured if the property holds over 8,000 characters that llStringLength(llGetObjectDesc()) or llSubStringIndex(llGetObjectDesc(), "x" would work byond 255.

So the idea of 8,034 is more theoretical. As you said, for all intents and purposes, the limit is 255.

I've found that editing it will chop to the 127 or so chars that you can edit.

I haven't tried linked prims yet. There is a chance that only the root prim gets chopped since the editor can only edit the root prims description.

Just opening the object in edit seems to be enough to truncate description to 255 for all prims (i tested with root prim and one child).

Giving an object with a 500 character description to an alt, made it impossible to rez: parse failure...

Phil Hanner
Inspired by Doomsie