Re: [Boost-users] list all drives

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] list all drives
From: Daniel Trebbien (dtrebbien_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-07-13 07:36:34

> Since you mentioned "AFAIK", I thought I'd fill in some more details.
>
> The Win32 API has separate roots, using letters and @.
> The underlying "native" OS uses a common root for named OS objects that
> includes files and many other things.  The Win32 function you call takes
> care of qualifying names that are relative to a current directory and/or
> drive, and also takes care of drive letters, turning it into a full Native
> name.  The drive letters are named symbolic links in a known place which
> seems to vary with Windows versions.  In XP-64-bit, I see "\GLOBAL??"
> containing "A:" as a link to "\Device\Floppy0", etc.  The "\Device" stuff is
> not accessible to Win32, but to drivers.  It is like the Unix device
> directory, except it doesn't make it look like files in a file system.  It's
> a tree of heterogeneous objects.

Are the native names that you are talking about canonical? Is there
any way for a user-space program to obtain the native name for a drive
or mounted folder
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa364041.aspx)?