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From: John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Python (was Re: I did not inhale)
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2024 13:30:05 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On Mon, 19 Aug 2024 13:14:00 -0700
Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote:

> I happen to be typing this on a Windows laptop (via ssh to another
> system).  The system drive is called "C:", and I don't know of any
> other name by which I can refer to it.  If I examine its properties
> in Windows Explorer, it appears to have the label "Acer", but that's
> not the "messy string with lots of backslashes" you referred to.
> 
> It strikes me that "C:" is the drive's "official" name in any
> reasonable sense of the word.
> 
> What API are you referring to, what can I expect it to give me as the
> "official" name of my C: drive, and what could I do with that name?

NT has its own low-level scheme for identifying devices/representing
file paths. If you're curious, someone at the Google compound did a
write-up on it some years back:
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-definitive-guide-on-win32-to-nt.html

For most practical purposes, users and user-level application software
pretty much never see this or have to think about it - but it *is*
there, and it does cause strange corner-case behavior sometimes. (I'm
pretty sure the underlying reason why cmd.exe sometimes cannot access
network shares mapped to a conventional drive letter has to do with
this, f'rinstance.)