[Python-Dev] Special file "nul" in Windows and os.stat

["Martin v. Löwis"]

>>From my reading of the CRT source code, _stat() uses FindFirstFile().
> This in turn appears to return a valid result on "nul" -
> win32api.FindFile, which is a thin wrapper round FindFirstFile etc,
> returns
> 
>>>> win32api.FindFiles("nul")
> [(32, <PyTime:01/01/1601 00:00:00>, <PyTime:01/01/1601 00:00:00>,
> <PyTime:01/01/1601 00:00:00>, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 'nul
> ', '')]

Ok. I would still like to avoid calling FindFirstFile *first*, i.e.
"normally" use GetFileAttributesEx first, and only fall back to
FindFirstFile if that gives an error. Such fallback already occurs
if the GetFileAttributesEx error was ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION.

So is there any good way to determine that the GetFileAttributesError
was caused by using a "reserved" file name. It seems that the error
is ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER, but that would also be issued if you
have an otherwise-invalid file name (e.g. one including wild cards),
right?

> This is on my machine, using the Windows Server 2003 SP1 CRT source
> code. How consistent it is across versions, or anything else, I can't
> say :-(

Thanks, that helps already.

Regards,
Martin