Con for a directory

Creating Folders in WinXP is a piece of cake, but tried creating a folder named con??

A mail stating that a directory named con cannot be created is being circulated nowadays..

Researching on the same, i found these facts..

Actually , con is a device name and is reserved by the MSDOS system..
The other reserved device names that cannot be used as a filename or directory name are:

PRN, AUX, CLOCK$, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9.

These words are reseverved by the MSDOS system for system purposes and are handled by the system only, to avoid duplicates being created and to mess up the OS..

If you would like to check each and every one in the list i mentioned above, try renaming a folder with any of the names mentioned above...and guess what?? they all reset themselves as 'new folder'!!!

Well to spice up this discussion, there is a way to create a folder named con (or any of the reserved names above)..

Type in this command at command prompt to get a folder named con or say prn

WOW u got a folder named con, Cross check it by opening the explorer, u will see a folder named con and prn at your c drive :)

haha , now the funny part is... try deleting the con folder from ur machine ...

Ok , to delete the folder you will have to again type in commands at command prompt

Type this command to delete the con and prn folders u just created..



Wondering how these commands achieved, what seemed to be impossible?

These command syntaxes are used to create folders across network, in this case, we are redirecting it back to the local machine by using '\\' in our command, in a way, tricking the O.S, which probably somehow allows the creation of directory names with that of MSDOS reserved names.