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eTrickz For Computer Geeks

Monday, March 17, 2008

'CON' Folder

Myth - "Not being able to name a file or folder 'CON' is a bug or a secret"

Reality - "Several special file names are reserved by the system and cannot be used for files or folders: CON, AUX, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, PRN, NUL. This goes back to DOS 1.0 which didn't support subdirectories, lowercase, or filenames longer than 8.3. 'CON' is a reserved word from the old DOS days, simply meaning 'console'. If you wanted to create a new text file in DOS you could type 'copy con newfile.txt' meaning copy from the console to newfile.txt. This would let you type some lines and when you ended the file you would have a file called newfile.txt containing whatever you wrote in the console. Since they are still relied on with things like batch files (redirect to >NUL) they are still reserved today."

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