4 ms·

I always thought it was so that file names could have dates in them: BUDGET_09/12/1982.XSL

• gothroach 7y ago
  I don't recall a time when you could use / in Windows file or directory names.
  • jolmg 7y ago
    So Windows forbids other characters in names besides the directory separator? EDIT: Apparently: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1976007/what-characters-are-forbidden-in-windows-and-linux-directory-names#31976060 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1976007/what-characters-...
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • jonhohle 7y ago
      IIRC, different APIs in Windows handle special characters for filenames differently. This was probably around the Windows 98 timeframe, but I remember several instances when extracting zips (probably WAREZ) where the file that was written contained characters that Explorer couldn't handle correctly. It wouldn't allow moving those files to the Recycling Bin, but would typically allow renaming the portion before the extension. I had a collection of `zzzz.???` files for a long time.
• Sharlin 7y ago
  17-character file name, what madness is that? At best you could do BUDG0912.XSL or BU091282.XSL or something.
  • ncmncm 7y ago
    We're talking about MacOS now. It was really common back then to put dates in file names, and names could be 32 characters long. Furthermore, you didn't need an extension because every file had a separate 4-byte (binary, but usually ASCII anyway) type.
    • Sharlin 7y ago
      Who's talking about MacOS? The GP comment was top-level.