In DOS/Windows the shell does not expand as the sibling comment says (which puts some burden on the programmer - I had to use a Windows DLL in a perl script once to replicate Windows-style argument handling) but as most people know they also have paths with \ and options with /, and / is not a valid filename character.
This use of / for options goes way back to VMS apparently[0] and changing the path separator to avoid ambiguity does seem sensible. Of course, Windows has its own quirks like CON.
This use of / for options goes way back to VMS apparently[0] and changing the path separator to avoid ambiguity does seem sensible. Of course, Windows has its own quirks like CON.
0: https://superuser.com/a/176395/206248