Re: aux.* as filename

[James Youngman]

On 6/24/07, Francky Leyn <address@hidden> wrote:
> Would it not be a good idea that all these cases were handled
> correctly by a windows coreutil?
> a) so that the command no longer hangs

But it's doing what you tell it.  These files are special files in
Windows.  Like /dev/null is special in Unix.   Except that of course
you can't see them with DIR or Cygwin ls.  I assume this is partly
because these filenames were special even in DOS 1.x, which had no
support for directories.

> b) that something better than the cryptic 'bad file specifier' is
> written out

I'm not sure what is causing that, so I can't comment.

>     Eg: aux is a name reserved by windows

If windows changes to un-reserve the name, presumably the code would
be out of date.


> c) That under UNIX a warning is issued saying the filename is not Windows
>     compatible.

It would be equally reasonable to have other tools to check for this
too, such as editors, archiving utilities, CD-ROM writing programs,
and so on.   Should they also check for VMS filename compatibility?
TOPS-20?  MVS?  I would argue that it's probably better to put this
kind of checking into a separate tool.

That tool already exists.  It's called doschk and it's Free Software,
too.  I'm not aware of any equivalent tool for TOPS-20 filenames,
though.


>     I worked for years under UNIX. Never any problems
>     with filenames. Now that I'm forced to work under Windows, my
>     filesystem is broken at multiple points. I wouldn't have encountered
>     this if I was warned.

My sympathies, I wouldn't enjoy that either.

James.