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From: plocher@puff.wisc.edu (John Plocher)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: Device Names in MS-DOS
Message-ID: <206@puff.wisc.edu>
Date: Sun, 28-Sep-86 13:50:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: puff.206
Posted: Sun Sep 28 13:50:30 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 19:11:08 EDT
References: <10800015@mcomp>
Reply-To: plocher@puff.WISC.EDU (John Plocher)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 26
Keywords: DOS DEVICE NAMES /dev
Summary: A look inside DOS at the use of device names

[fodder]

In reply to the notation behind /dev/con as used under MS-DOS:

 DOS parses the filename into three parts:
     PATH \ FILENAME . TYPE
If FILENAME is a known device (CON, COM1, PRN, NUL...) then
the file request goes directly to that device driver.
Thus MASM... use the filename NUL.LST etc to denote
the bit bucket.  
 In this light, the /dev is completely ignored, in fact
you *could* use /foo/bar/foobar/nul.tmp as another name for the
bit-bucket.

 There is an undoccumented DOS call (at least in 2.1) which
makes device names completely significant (path\filename.type)
but I don't know of ANYONE who uses it.


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