And that is why, in 2009, when developing in Microsoft .NET 3.5 for ASP.NET MVC 1.0 on a Windows 7 system, you cannot include /com\d(\..*)?, /lpt\d(\..*)?, /con(\..*)?, /aux(\..*)?, /prn(\..*)?, or /nul(\..*)? in any of your routes.
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This is the second time I've been to this blog and found a topic that interests me as a developer specialising in Microsoft technologies. The first time I was just searching for web sites that had quoted an erroneous blog post about Silverlight. This time I was just coming back to see what's new!
Surely this quote isn't meant to be a criticism of ASP.NET MVC 1.0 and/or the platform? I wouldn't even include this in the list of improvements to be prioritised for the next version.
It's an interesting point -- although it's purely academic because the developer can obviously choose any route and has no need to use a reserved directory name. If the developer did want to deliberately use a disallowed route, although there would never be any reason for doing so, but there are various options for a workaround. However, this is just a quirk of Windows which would never causes a problem for reral-life users or developers.
You don't even need anything other than Windows to see this in action. Just try to create a directory with a reserved name and you'll see it won't let you. Similarly, if you try to create a directory with invalid or impossible characters, e.g. a space " ", obviously this is also not be allowed. This doesn't affect real people, whether they are Windows users or developers, because they can just use a more sensible directory name -- for the same reason no web user would ever be affected by this.
ASP.NET MVC fanboy - 14th June 2009 14:34 - #
Troll harder?
Charles - 15th June 2009 04:04 - #
Fanboi, This restriction is ridiculous, and your defense of it is bordering on foaming-at-the-mouth. Dude, you must have something better to do with your time.
Koz - 15th June 2009 08:24 - #
In this case the quote isn't meant to be a criticism of the platform, I just think it's fascinating when weird constraints show up for historic reasons.