
It is meant to help you avoid common errors in filenames. If you limit the backend, every linux/android/macos/other client has to.

#LIST OF ILLEGAL CHARACTERS FOR MAC FILES MAC OS X#
The only illegal character for file and folder names in Mac OS X is the colon ':' File and folder names are not.
Because of this, migrating certain files and folders from OS 9 to OS X may cause unexpected behavior. Although I dont totally agree with DTs definition of unwanted characters in files: /,:,<,>,, are generally not a good idea on Mac OS (.Since Mac OS X is build on top of UNIX there are a few inherent conventions that OS 9 users may not expect. To type M click Ctrl+V and Ctrl+M i.e you can hold the CTRL key and press V and M sequentially. So run the grep command on the file as shown below to find out and display all the lines where the M character is present.
Characters to Avoid in Directories and Filenames Avoid Windows-reserved characters and filenames < (less than) > (greater than) : (colon) (double quote) / (forward slash) (backslash). The only illegal character for file and folder names in Mac OS 9 is the colon ':' File and folder names may be up to 31 characters in length MACINTOSH OS X CONVENTIONS. grep command in Linux/Unix allows you to search a string in a file.