From:	"John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: File utils are crap?
Date:	Sun, 22 Dec 1996 20:59:47 -0800
Organization:	Two pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt
Lines:	23
Message-ID:	<32BE11B3.5417@cs.com>
References:	<Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 961222164757 DOT 973B-100000 AT is>
Reply-To:	fighteer AT cs DOT com
NNTP-Posting-Host:	ppp104.cs.com
Mime-Version:	1.0
CC:	Ian Romanick <idr AT cs DOT pdx DOT edu>
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway:	from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> To avoid such a costly
> test, DJGPP just strips away the "/dev/" part and lets DOS decide if the
> rest is a known file.  This makes "ls -l /dev/tty" and "ls -l /dev/clock$"
> work.  Unfortunately, it also has a nasty side-effect if you really have a
> directory called "/dev".  End of story.

Would it be possible to put a switch in the DJGPP startup code that
turns off this implicit device handling?  That way a program ported from
Unix would work properly, but a program written for DOS alone could turn
off the handling and be able to use "/dev" like it expects to. 
Unfortunately, to use this feature with ported programs, you would still
have to convert all the /dev/* references to the DOS ones, which
eliminates the benefit of the library conversion in the first place.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I  |        fighteer AT cs DOT com         |
|    *  Proud user of DJGPP!  *    |   http://www.cs.com/fighteer   |
|    ObJoke:  If Bill Gates were a robber, not only would he        |
|     shoot you, but he'd send you a bill for the bullets.          |
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