History
Around 1962, the Compatible Time-Sharing System introduced the concept of a file (i.e., non-paper file).
Around this same time appeared the dot (period or full-stop) as a filename extension separator, and the limit to three letter extensions might have come from RAD50 16-bit limits.
Traditionally, filenames allowed only alphanumeric characters, but as time progressed, the number of characters allowed increased. This led to incompatibility problems when moving files from one file system to another.
Around 1995, VFAT, a variant of the FAT filesystem with an extended directory format, was introduced in Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5. It allowed mixed-case Unicode long filenames (LFNs), in addition to classic "8.3" names.
In 1985, RFC 959 officially defined a pathname to be the character string which must be entered into a file system by a user in order to identify a file.
OS X 10.3 marked Apple's adoption of Unicode 3.2 character decomposition, superseding the Unicode 2.1 decomposition used previously. This change caused problems for developers writing software for OS X.
Read more about this topic: Filename
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