Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2003 11:46:57 +0200
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To: dj AT delorie DOT com
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In-reply-to: <200303080130.h281UMb24534@envy.delorie.com> (message from DJ
	Delorie on Fri, 7 Mar 2003 20:30:22 -0500)
Subject: Re: New POSIX: pwrite [PATCH]
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> Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 20:30:22 -0500
> From: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
> 
> In unix there is a difference between a tty and other character
> devices.  In dos, I'm not sure we can really tell - there isn't enough
> information in the device bits to tell.

I think there are bits there that tell this.  These are those two
bits which `isatty' currently uses.

Why do you think these bits are not enough?

> clock$ for example, probably
> isn't a "tty" per se, but in all the contexts I can think of where it
> makes sense to use isatty() in djgpp, clock$ is one of them.

Even if we couldn't find a single program where the distinction
between clock$ and a real terminal device would matter, I think it
still could make sense to make that distinction, simply because clock$
is not a terminal device.

> In the case of redirected stdout, for example, we still can't tell the
> difference between anything other than devices (stdout$, clock$, com1,
> null, etc) and files

Unless I misunderstand what you are saying, I think we _can_ tell the
difference: DOS knows the difference, and `isatty' and `stat'/`fstat'
tell us about it.