Rules for 8.3-compliant filenames

The following criteria must be met for an 8.3-compliant file or directory name:

- The filename must be composed of all uppercase letters.

- Any combination of letters (A-Z) and/or numbers (0-9) must be used.

- The following special characters may be used:

$ Dollar sign
% Percent sign
' Apostrophe
` Opening single quotation mark
- Hyphen
@ At sign
{ Left brace
} Right brace
~ Tilde
! Exclamation point
# Number sign
( Opening parenthesis
) Closing parenthesis
& Ampersand
_ Underscore
^ Caret

When a file or subdirectory is named in Windows 95, the system creates a primary filename, which can be a long filename, and an MS-DOS-compliant 8.3 alias.

If the file or subdirectory name is already 8.3 compliant, then only one directory entry is used.