Re: aux.* as filename

[John Cowan]

Francky Leyn scripsit:

> I have DVD with a file system on. At some place the files aux.c,
> aux.h and aux.pg are present. If you try to cp, find, tar or whatever,
> the command "hangs".  I thought: well perhaps those files are corrupt
> on the DVD. I will try a testcase.  I issue touch aux.c at a place on
> the C:\. What do I get?  touch: closing `aux.c': Bad file descriptor.
> Can someone explain me what I encounter here?

The filenames aux, com1, com2, com3, con, lpt1, lpt2, lpt3, nul, and prn
are reserved by Windows.  In DOS days, they were the names of devices;
you can still say "copy foo con" to the DOS shells and the contents of
foo will be displayed in the shell window.  The pathname of such a file
and any extension applied to it are completely ignored.  So you cannot
create files named aux.c or even foo/bar/aux.c.  There is no work-around
for this.

Similarly, the characters ?, ", <, >, *, |, and : cannot be used in
Windows filenames or directory names.

-- 
John Cowan   http://ccil.org/~cowan    address@hidden
We want more school houses and less jails; more books and less arsenals;
more learning and less vice; more constant work and less crime; more
leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of
the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.  --Samuel Gompers