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UNC names (any path starting with \\?\) do not support slashes. [4] The following examples show MS-DOS/Windows-style paths, with backslashes used to match the most common syntax: A:\Temp\File.txt This path points to a file with the name File.txt, located in the directory Temp, which in turn is located in the root directory of the drive A:.
Character Name Reason for prohibition / slash: Used as a path name component separator in Unix-like, Windows, and Amiga systems. (For as long as the SwitChar setting is set to /, the DOS COMMAND.COM shell would consume it as a switch character, but DOS and Windows themselves always accept it as a separator on API level.)
The character sequence of two slash characters (//) after the string file: denotes that either a hostname or the literal term localhost follows, [3] although this part may be omitted entirely, or may contain an empty hostname. [4] The single slash between host and path denotes the start of the local-path part of the URI and must be present. [5]
Each additional path name in this seemingly infinite set is an actual valid Windows path which refers to the same location. In practice, path names are limited by the 260-character DOS path limit (or newer 32,767 character limit), but truncation may result in incomplete or invalid path and file names.
For backwards-compatibility with MS-DOS and older Windows software, which recognizes filenames of a maximum of 11 characters in length with 8.3 format (i.e.: an eight-letter filename, a dot and a three-letter extension, such as autoexec.bat), files with LFNs get stored on disk in 8.3 format (longfilename.txt becoming longfi~1.txt), with the ...
The '/' character is not valid for use as a path separator, it is used to denote command-line switches. For example, on Windows, dir temp/b will list everything in the temp directory and use the /b (bare listing) switch, rather than listing a file or directory called temp\b. Probably also need to edit the description for '\' if you change this.
The FAT file system for DOS and Windows stores file names as an 8-character name and a three-character extension. The period character is not stored. The High Performance File System (HPFS), used in Microsoft and IBM's OS/2 stores the file name as a single string, with the "." character as just another character in the file name.
The Microsoft Windows family of operating systems inherited the MS-DOS behavior and so still support either character – but individual Windows programs and sub-systems may, wrongly, only accept the backslash as a path delimiter, or may misinterpret a forward slash if it is used as such.