At which layer? dir /w, for example, is never going to list the contents of \w.

All the layers, except applications where devs still look for the wrong slash manually.

OSes and modern programming languages have APIs for file navigation for a reason.

On Windows this implies old applications from another era, good old command window, or people that don't know better.

The kernel and ntfs does not care about slash direction. Specific programs like dir might though and honestly if you're on windows just use powershell and avoid legacy cmd stuff.

Additionally on programming languages use the apis for path management, instead of explicit looking for the \ or / characters.

Use powershell.

Get-ChildItem /w

Too many keystrokes, people won't use it.

gci /w than?

ls /w also works

Aliases