File names in the CIFS protocol consist of components separated by a backslash ('\'). Early clients of the CIFS protocol required that the name components adhere to an 8.3 format name. These names consist of two parts: a basename of no more than 8 characters, and an extension of no more than 3 characters. The basename and extension are separated by a '.'. All characters are legal in the basename and extension except the space character (0x20) and:
" . / \[]:+|<>=;,*?
If the client has indicated long name support by setting bit2 in the Flags2 field of the SMB header, this indicates that the client is not bound by the 8.3 convention. Specifically this indicates that any SMB which returns file names to the client may return names which do not adhere to the 8.3 convention, and have a total length of up to 255 characters. This capability was introduced with the LM1.2X002 protocol dialect.