From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 11941 invoked by alias); 17 Sep 2010 17:22:21 -0000 Received: (qmail 11920 invoked by uid 22791); 17 Sep 2010 17:22:20 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-6.9 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI,SPF_HELO_PASS,T_RP_MATCHES_RCVD X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mx1.redhat.com (HELO mx1.redhat.com) (209.132.183.28) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:22:14 +0000 Received: from int-mx01.intmail.prod.int.phx2.redhat.com (int-mx01.intmail.prod.int.phx2.redhat.com [10.5.11.11]) by mx1.redhat.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id o8HHMDtc031121 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=OK) for ; Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:22:13 -0400 Received: from [10.3.113.81] (ovpn-113-81.phx2.redhat.com [10.3.113.81]) by int-mx01.intmail.prod.int.phx2.redhat.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id o8HHMCSV020687 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:22:13 -0400 Message-ID: <4C93A3C4.80508@redhat.com> Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:02:00 -0000 From: Eric Blake User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100907 Fedora/3.1.3-1.fc13 Mnenhy/0.8.3 Thunderbird/3.1.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cygwin@cygwin.com Subject: Re: where was mention of what creates NUL files? References: <4C93A171.4040402@fgm.com> In-Reply-To: <4C93A171.4040402@fgm.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com X-SW-Source: 2010-09/txt/msg00576.txt.bz2 On 09/17/2010 11:12 AM, Daniel Barclay wrote: > Does anyone recall a mention of what in CygWin (or possibly Emacs) creates > files with a simple name of "NUL"? Windows automagically maps the file named "NUL", in any directory, to the equivalent of Unix' /dev/null. Cygwin doesn't create it, but all the same, portable programs should never name a file that case-insensitively matches 'nul', 'aux', or a host of other windows-magic names: http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html#File-System-Conventions Meanwhile, cygwin 1.7 has added some magic to use native NT calls to work around these limitations, so that you can have a file that appears to be named "NUL" from within cygwin, but which is really exploiting some 16-bit values outside of Unicode. But various windows programs that use windows API (rather than lower-level NT API), including your file Explorer, have a hard time figuring out what cygwin did. -- Eric Blake eblake@redhat.com +1-801-349-2682 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple