nomad@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU (09/20/87)
There is a psudo-device on PC-DOS called nul: or null: (I can't remember which) - it is (I believe) the equivalent of /dev/null. nomad ------------------------- LEE DAMON FidoNet: 152/201 (The Castle) - (503) 757-8841 nomad@cs.orst.edu Internet: nomad@cs.orst.edu UUCP : {hp-pcd,tektronix}!orstcs!nomad "Say what you like, the bicycle has a great past ahead of it!"
jvc@prism.UUCP (09/28/87)
>DOS has some pre-defined "special" devices, for various purposes. They are >typically referenced as a drive identifier, but the ":" may be omitted, >and DOS will still recognize the "device". One of these is the "nul:" >device. Anything that is re-directed to nul: (or *any* file name >beginning with "nul") effectively ends up in the bit bucket. That is why >it is impossible to create a real file such as "nulify.doc". The "nul" >at the beginning of the file name forces DOS to ignore the remaining >characters. The same principle applies to the other "special" devices. > >Chris Seaman | o\ /o Yea, leaving off the : works but did you try creating a file "nulify.doc" or did you just assume that you couldn't. You can use any of the reserved device names as the first letters of a file name as long as you have at least one additional character before the extention. Example: nula.doc conb.tre prns As someone mentioned before, adding extentions to device names won't have any affect. For example: nul nul.doc nul.com nul.exe all refer to the same device (therefore you cannot create a file with these names). jvc@mirror.tmc.com