Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 09:34:21 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: slstewart AT infocom DOT net
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: File utils are crap?
In-Reply-To: <32C58881.F51@infocom.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.961229092944.10388Q-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Sat, 28 Dec 1996 slstewart AT infocom DOT net wrote:

> Interesting...  What exactly is "truename"?  "truename /?" returned "Reserved command name"
> I assume its really for subst's & such, though it does not appear in any DOS manual I own.

TRUENAME is an undocumented command internal to COMMAND.COM which prints 
the fully qualified pathname of a file.  It is just a wrapper to the DOS 
function 60h (which is also undocumented).  See the docs for the DJGPP 
library function `_truename' for more details.

> Are there other undocumented commands?

Probably.

> Also, DOS knows about devices regardless of what directory you put them in:
> truename c:\heeba\jeeba\con  ==> C:/CON

Yes, and so does `stat' from DJGPP.  The problems with /dev are only 
visible when you use such device names as "/dev/tty", which are unknown 
to DOS (try "truename /dev/tty" and see).