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http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2007/12/17/6785519.aspx[^]:

But some quirks of the FCB matching algorithm persist into Win32 because they have become idiom.

For example, if your pattern ends in .*, the .* is ignored. Without this rule, the pattern *.* would match only files that contained a dot, which would break probably 90% of all the batch files on the planet, as well as everybody's muscle memory, since everybody running Windows NT 3.1 grew up in a world where *.* meant all files.

As another example, a pattern that ends in a dot doesn't actually match files which end in a dot; it matches files with no extension. And a question mark can match zero characters if it comes immediately before a dot.

There may be other weird Win32 pattern matching quirks, but those are the two that come to mind right away, and they both exist to maintain batch file compatibility with the old 8.3 file pattern matching algorithm.

Richard Deeming wrote:

everybody running Windows NT 3.1 grew up in a world where *.* meant
all files.

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

Ah, but I cut my teeth in VMS, where *.* does mean there must be a dot

Jeremy Falcon wrote:

no files without an extension

Jeremy Falcon wrote:

rather than base it on an extension

Jeremy Falcon wrote:

it's gonna have a text file icon on it.

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

In DOS (and *nix?), there is basically ony one "type" of file -- a sequence of bytes -- which, at best, can be categorized as either "binary" or "text", but the OS makes no actual distinction.

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

The OpenVMS Record Management System has many attributes for files, and even a "text" file may use CRLF, LF, or CR for newline, it may have Fortran control characters, it could have fixed-size records. The OS knows these things and can act appropriately.

Jeremy Falcon wrote:

The old guy in me is saving brain space though, for booze.

David O'Neil wrote:

Everything is still a handy tool worth being aware of.