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Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:42:28 -0500
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf-no-personal-reply-please AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Missing /dev
Message-ID: <20040121194228.GC26884@redhat.com>
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On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 02:33:42PM -0500, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 02:25:13PM -0500, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
>>On Wed, 21 Jan 2004, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>>
>>> This is a tiny little annoyance in Cygwin: various device paths exist,
>>> like your controlling terminal /dev/conin. However, there is no actual
>>> /dev directory in the filesystem.
>>>
>>> This confuses some programs that do parsing on the path rather than
>>> just pass the entire string to open(). E.g. CLISP's file I/O library:
>>>
>>> [6]> (with-open-file (f "/dev/conin" :direction :input) (read f))
>>>
>>> *** - nonexistent directory: #P"/dev/"
>>>
>>> The simple workaround is to ``mkdir /dev'', but would it be a bad idea
>>> for the Cygwin installer to create this directory?
>>
>>AFAIK, once Cygwin has proper mkdev, /dev will be a real directory.  Until
>>then, you can use the script from
>
>Cygwin has had a proper mk*nod* for a while, and, theoretically, it
>should have been working in 1.5.6, although I just tried it with the
>latest snapshot and it seems to be broken currently.

Actually, it seems to be working.  I stupidly tested it with an echo
from the windows command prompt, which didn't understand a cygwin
device.  This works fine:

  bash$ ls -l /dev/tty
  bash$ mknod foo c 5 0

  bash$ ls -l foo
  crw-rw-rw-    1 cgf      None       5,   0 Jan 21 14:39 foo
  bash$ echo hello > foo
  hello

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