To be fair, it's not in the core, it's in the shell. The shell treats files that have FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN and start with a ~ as if they also had FILE_ATTRIBUT

To be fair, it's not in the core, it's in the shell. The shell treats files that have FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN and start with a ~ as if they also had FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM, but this only affects the shell. It doesn't leak to other programs that use the filesystem APIs directly. The shell has always had a different, more user-oriented view on the filesystem. It also does other user-oriented things, like replacing some filesystem names with display names (eg. C:\ -> Local Disk (C:),) letting you browse things that aren't filesystem objects, like remote FTP shares and files inside .zip archives, and synthesizing folders that don't really exist like This PC/My Computer, the Desktop, Recycle Bin and Libraries.