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Comment by marcodiego | Hacker News Reader

I created a file named aux.docx on a pendrive with Linux. Tried to open it on windows 7. It crashed word with a strange error. Don't know what would happen on 8+.

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It would fail, too. ‘CON’ has been a reserved name since the days of DOS (actually CP/M, though that doesn’t have direct lineage to Windows) where it acted as a device name for the console. You can still use it that way. In a CMD window:

`type CON > file.txt`, then type some stuff and press CTRL+Z.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/namin...

This is a Win32-ism rather than an NT-ism. This will work:

    mkdir \\.\C:\COM1

It's a dos holdover implemented in the win32 side of things in user space. I'm pretty sure it still exists on win11.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40794287/cannot-write-to...

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