dot

In the cross-platform environment of our university, at least three different OS connect to the smb shared group directories. Apparently Macs are able to save files with characters that are not allowed on other platforms and which cannot be easily deleted. Recently we had several files which ended with a '.' (dot) or a ' ' (space), and we were not able to remove them via the GUI. In Windows 7, I managed via the command line with:
delete "file." or
delete "file "

I was fighting for several days to delete a file in Windows XP that started with dot underscore (._). The message was always: "The system cannot find the path specified". Nothing worked. No safe mode, no command line, no special syntax. The Microsoft Knowledge Base addresses the problem, but instead of pointing to an easy solution it gives lots of useless and even wrong information, e.g the Windows XP Resource Kit didn't contain the RM.EXE program, that was supposed to be able to delete those files with "weird" file names.