Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 12:49:47 +0300
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To: dkaufman AT rahul DOT net
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In-reply-to: <bdbdie$im7$1@blue.rahul.net> (message from Doug Kaufman on Wed,
	25 Jun 2003 05:56:30 +0000 (UTC))
Subject: Re: stat and character devices
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> From: Doug Kaufman <dkaufman AT rahul DOT net>
> Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
> Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 05:56:30 +0000 (UTC)
> 
> I noticed that stat treats some character devices differently, depending
> on whether it is run in a DOS box under Win98 or in plain DOS. The COM
> series (com1, com2, etc.) shows as a character device when run under
> plain DOS, but not in the DOS box under Win98.

On my Windows 98 box, "ls -l com2" shows "com2" in yellow, which means
`stat' did return the character-device bit set for it.  So I guess I
cannot reproduce this here.

> A test program that demonstrates this follows.

You didn't show the results of running this program on Windows 98.
Here are mine:

    The value of base is com1
    The value of st_dev is -1.
    The value of st_mode is 8612.
    The file is a character device.

Exactly as I'd expect.

So I guess more digging is required.