The folder name was listed in Explorer with just plain four dots .....

When I tried opening it, I came into some kind of endless rabbit hole loop where I opened the exact same folder again and again - I could do this endlessly. Showing the path like C:\ExamplePath\....\....\....\...\.... etc.

It was hanging my TypeScript compilation in one specific project. It took me more than a year before I found this folder and its related problems, because it was rooted deeply in nested folders. I never expected an issue like this, so I never looked for it.

I couldn't delete the folder the normal ways because of the special name. In the end, I could remove it by using CommandLine and deleting the parent folder with rd /s /q path.

I tried to create the folder afterward again, but was unable to do so with both Explorer and Command line.

In my >20 years of using Windows, I've never seen this bug before, and I can imagine it can be a really annoying and confusing problem for amateur users.

Does anyone know how this could have happened and how to reproduce this issue?

Update

For people who are interested: this path was located deep within a TFS folder. So probably TFS uses the bypass method @grawity explained ("Various file managers, archivers, etc")

Did I stumble on a rare TFS bug?