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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:.
Before the advent of 32-bit operating systems, file names were typically limited to short names (6 to 14 characters in size). Modern operating systems now typically allow much longer filenames (more than 250 characters per pathname element).
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]
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 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.
For example, a newline character is denoted `n. Most common programming languages use a backslash as the escape character (e.g., \n), but because Windows allows the backslash as a path separator, it is impractical for PowerShell to use backslash for a different purpose. Two backticks produce the ` character itself.
In contrast, a character entity reference refers to a character by the name of an entity which has the desired character as its replacement text. The entity must either be predefined (built into the markup language) or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition (DTD). The format is the same as for any entity reference: &name;