"con" on DOS machines (remember: DOS isn't dead, it just smells that way), is the "console", roughly equivilent to *nix /dev/tty devices. Not to burst your bubble, but it doesn't really have anything to do with Perl.

Despite Microsoft's efforts to cover it up, Windows really does have devices setup as pseduo-files, just as *nix people expect. I've noticed this truth surface more often in NT-based systems than the old DOS-based ones.

There is also an old bug that causes Win9* machines to crash when you try to open C:\con\con (see this Microsoft security post). Actually, it crashes on many (all?) DOS device names. C:\con\con is just the most popular one to use.

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

In reply to Re: Reading from the keyboard in Win32 without using STDIN by hardburn
in thread Reading from the keyboard in Win32 without using STDIN by amrangaye

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