Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 20:13:05 +0300 (IDT)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Ruiter de M <mdruiter AT cs DOT vu DOT nl>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: DJGPP on drive c: and sources on drive d: PROBLEM
In-Reply-To: <6fobol$iv8$1@star.cs.vu.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980330200711.20942F-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Precedence: bulk


On 30 Mar 1998, Ruiter de M wrote:

> Is `\DEV' used in DOS itself? I read the DOS-special devices (CON,
> NUL, etc) exist in \DEV even if \DEV doesn't exist. Is this documented
> behaviour?

It is a documented fact that all DOS devices behave as if they lived in
every directory, and also in a directory \DEV even if that doesn't exist. 
But DOS doesn't prevent you from actually having such a directory. 

DJGPP adds a quirk that makes many DJGPP programs fail or behave 
erratically on files in a directory by that name.  The reasons are 
complex, but in a nutshell, this is because DJGPP's libc tries to pretend 
that even non-existent devices like /dev/null and /dev/tty exist, to 
support Unix programs which assume this without checking, and the library 
further tries to make all DOS calls to devices work the same regardless 
of the fact whether they do or don't include the "/dev/" prefix (many DOS 
calls work inconsistently in such cases).