Odd Windows Easter Egg

Discussion in 'General' started by Ms.NatureFaerie, Oct 3, 2008.

  1. I posted a George Bush easter egg in the Politics forum (as it seemed to fit best there lol) but here is another one for all to enjoy.

    Windows users only: Try to name a folder con. You can't! Why...I dunno. You can't save files as con either. Open up notepad or word and give it a try. Pretty cool eh? If you don't think so then I wasted your time and apologize. However, I am stoned and enjoyed it, therefore, you should too

    :smoke:
     
  2. I just renamed a folder con, I now have a folder named con lol.

    No, no i dont LOL mt
     
  3. hmm take a screenshot :)
     

  4. i edited the post cause i was wrong i MT

    if i try and name it con it reverts back
     
  5. :p

    nothing groundbreaking I know....but weird.
     
  6. Sorry for spoiling the mystery :)

    "It's not that weird. '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 with ^Z (DOSish for 'end of file') you would have a file called newfile.txt containing whatever you wrote in the console. This is indeed still possible in the Windows XP console, and can you see what mess it would cause if you let files or folders have the name 'con'? What would 'copy con newfile.txt' then mean? BSOD? Russ Watts confirms the suggestion, giving this list of other DOS devices that can't be used as folder names:
    CON, PRN, AUX, CLOCK$, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9."


    http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2005/10/19/windows-no-con-do
     

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