Before everyone wised up / bad publicity forced them to, it wasn't uncommon for things like FTP servers to be able to create filenames which were either very long or contained reserved DOS names (e.g. CON, AUX, LPT1, etc.) and were thus undeletable using the Win32 APIs used by Explorer or cmd.exe.
The posix and NT-native APIs didn't have this limit so Windows admins either had to find a ported POSIX utility (rm.exe was popular) or learn how to use UNC paths:
Characteristically, Microsoft doesn't seem to be interested in fixing this so everyone who builds a new file sharing service probably has to add layers of script-kiddy protection for backwards compatibility.
The posix and NT-native APIs didn't have this limit so Windows admins either had to find a ported POSIX utility (rm.exe was popular) or learn how to use UNC paths:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247%28v=vs.85%2...
Characteristically, Microsoft doesn't seem to be interested in fixing this so everyone who builds a new file sharing service probably has to add layers of script-kiddy protection for backwards compatibility.