Xref: utzoo comp.windows.ms.programmer:2291 comp.os.msdos.programmer:5046
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer,comp.os.msdos.programmer
Path: utzoo!sq!dak
From: dak@sq.sq.com (David A Keldsen)
Subject: Re: What to do about stdin, stdout, and stderr under Windows 3.0?
Message-ID: <1991May7.213347.709@sq.sq.com>
Keywords: Missing in action
Organization: SoftQuad Inc.
References: <1991Apr30.162028.7771@sq.sq.com> <6690@bwdls58.bnr.ca>
Date: Tue, 7 May 91 21:33:47 GMT
Lines: 45

>In article <1991Apr30.162028.7771@sq.sq.com> I wrote:
><On reading through the includes for the SDK, I see that std{in,out,err} are
><not supported under Windows.  While this isn't entirely surprising, what do
><you do to substitute for them?  (On Unix, I'd consider opening /dev/null,
><but there isn't one that I can find for DOS/MS-WINDOWS.)

mlord@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Mark Lord) writes:
>There is a device called NUL for use in the PC world.  NUL == /dev/null

Nice idea, but apparently "NUL" is magical to command.com.  fopen() in
the MSC libraries certainly doesn't do anything useful with "NUL" or
"NUL:"

I guess it's time for the summary, so here are the replies that I
received in the mail:

(1)  /dev/null doesn't work, but /dev/nul *does*.  
     (Ick!  It works empirically, but I don't know if I trust MS not to
     change it, as it sounds like a bug.)
(2)  You shouldn't be using streams under Windows anyhow, read Petzold's 
     book on Windows programming and redirect the output to a window.
     (Not applicable at this stage in development, although it's useful 
     information; clearly this is the model intended for MS-WINDOWS, but
     for this particular purpose, tossing the output to /dev/null is 
     just as useful.)
(3)  Try NUL
     (Doesn't work.)

So, what I'm going to do is...none of the above.  We're using a higher-level
"port" abstraction for what we're doing, and we've created a "null port"
which takes care of the problem and doesn't even use stdio.  Someday, it'll
do the appropriate magic for windowing systems...

Thanks (in no particular order) to:
cs352a41@zaphod.cs.iastate.edu. (Adam Goldberg)
rogerhef@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Roger Heflin)
poffen@sj.ate.slb.com  (Russ Poffenberger)

Regards,
Dak
-- 
David A. 'Dak' Keldsen of SoftQuad, Inc. email: dak@sq.com  phone: 416-963-8337
"It is well known that _things_ from undesirable universes are always seeking 
entrance into this one, which is the psychic equivalent of handy for the 
buses and closer to the shops." -- Terry Pratchett, _The Light Fantastic_