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The following should explain a bit better than I could: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247%28VS.85%29....

It's hard to Google, but that syntax is called UNC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(computing)#Uniform_Naming...

As other posters have said it's UNC, however if you're interested in other weirdness around files in Windows, checkout NTFS streams.

A UNC always references a network path. You can use \\?\ to reference a network path, but it can also be used to reference a local path too. \\?\ is not always used to represent a UNC.

\\?\ is an extended-length path.

\\?\ is an unparsed path - the path is passed directly to the filesystem, bypassing checks and other Win32 API restrictions - a side effect of this is that maximum length checks are bypassed, but this is NOT the only effect.

See GP's link for more details.

Try symbolhound instead: http://symbolhound.com/?q=%22%5C%5C%3F%5C%22