why does this path work?

[Dathon]

I am trying to recursively enumerate the contents of my Documents and
Settings folder. While doing this, I cam across the following:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\hpc\

This directory contains an empty file named " " (a single space)

The weird thing is that when I call Directory.Exists on this path
(C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\hpc\ ), it
returns true! This is clearly not a directory, but Windows thinks it is. In
fact, I confirmed this is a problem in Windows by looking at the
implementation for Directory.Exists, which turns "C:\Documents and
Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\hpc\ " into
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\hpc\ \." and
then calls the Win32 API for getting file attributes.

When I look at "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application
Data\Symantec\hpc\ \." in the Windows shell, it shows me the "C:\Documents
and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\hpc\" folder.

The short of the long is that I get stuck in an infinite loop trying to
recurse down into this directory. What's up with that!?

[[MSFT]]

Normally, we wouldn't have a file named " " in Windows file system.
Obviously, the special file was created by Symantec for particular usage, I
guess, to protect virus access or something else. This brings an incorrect
result for Directory.Exists in .NET. I think you may ignore this folder in
your application since they don't want us access it.

Luke