That's interesting. If 4NT is avoiding this behaviour, then it means that they must be doing something to avoid it, which also means that they must have recognised the bug at some point.

The bug is definitely there in the OS, vis;

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use Win32::API::Prototype;

ApiLink( 'Kernel32', 'HANDLE FindFirstFile( LPCTSTR lpFileName, LPWIN3
+2_FIND_DATA lpFindFileData )' );

my $FIND_DATA;

my $fHandle = FindFirstFile( $_ . 'junk', $FIND_DATA = chr(0)x300 )
    and print "'$_': '", substr( $FIND_DATA, 44 )
    or warn $^E
    for '?', '*', '<', '!'; # map chr, 0..255

__END__
P:\test>FFtest
'?': '
'*': 'junk
'<': 'junk
'!': '
[download]

# Uncomment the comment to see how I verified that only '*' and '<' exhibit the behaviour.

Maybe scrutiny of the 4NT website, or maybe even a question to their support people would be worthwhile in discovering the history of this.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller
If I understand your problem, I can solve it! Of course, the same can be said for you.