5 ms·
You know that famed backward-compatibility that some folks praise Microsoft for? Yeah, well, this is the dark side of that. I'm curious how much stuff would act
by mikestew 5y ago
You know that famed backward-compatibility that some folks praise Microsoft for? Yeah, well, this is the dark side of that. I'm curious how much stuff would actually break if one were just allowed to create files called COM1. Sure, someone is out there bit-banging stuff to a serial port with the copy command, but must we all suffer so that those three people don't have to rewrite?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- p_l 5y agoNot COPY, but software that runs on Win9x used those names still for opening devices. That's why they still work. For the same reason as other DOS Aliases, like C: If you use UNC paths, you can bypass alias names, because your path will be unambiguous - however if you write such name into one of the "classic" visible name spaces, software that uses classic paths (for example because people are familiar with them, and because rewriting all strings to ensure you use UNC is annoying) might... Find issues ;-)
- WorldMaker 5y agoOh there are plenty of batch files in DOS and Windows history that COPY SERIAL.TST COM1, just sending RS-232 bytes straight from file to COM1 via good old COPY.
- p_l 5y agoI sure expect a lot of them, hell it was one of the ways to use a plotter I had - same with printers. I was just pointing out that COPY was not the only use :)