delete a directory ending in period

I only solved this by wiping the disk. On UNIX I made a cpio file of nested directories that broke a long name into 14 character chunks, with the remainder the real file in a series of directories of the name chunks. Some directories ended in a period. Using pax to restore the cpio image on win2k, I got directory names ending in period. I could not delete them. Windows explorer could not open them. Command shell could not delete or rmdir them, even with partial name matches, like rmidr XXX*. I had a C program try to remove them and fail. Did I miss something, or were these so illegal the windows file system could not deal with them. No one I ever showed them to could remove them. How was pax able to create them in the first place?

Thank you in advance.