[AccessD] The Money Drive (WAS: OT: I'm old)

Gustav Brock Gustav at cactus.dk
Sat Feb 7 06:02:43 CST 2009


Hi Drew

OK, you are a true geek. 

I did know of subst - use it exactly for the purpose you describe, to simulate a (network) drive - but not that it accepts non-drive letters for drive letters.
This one is really fun:

SUBST :: C:\Windows

Now you can make a dir ::\*.ini - but in the command window only, Explorer doesn't like it!

/gustav

>>> DWUTKA at marlow.com 06-02-2009 23:33 >>>
For S & G's, I did a googling about drive letters, to see if there was
anything out there about A and B drives that didn't have to do with
older computers usually having one or two floppy drives...

Nope, that's the real deal.  No other mystical explanation.  (Most
people don't realize why IP addresses are four quads of 0 to 255... ;) )

Anyhow, in reading the pages I found, I discovered something VERY
interesting about SUBST.  For those of you who do not know, SUBST is a
DOS command (but works in XP and Vista too), that allows you to 'create'
a virtual drive off of a physical folder.

For example, let's say you have a network drive 'T:' at work.  And you
have an application that depends on files being at T:\SomeFolder\*.* .
Well if you create a folder on your C: drive, and call it TDrive (Thus
C:\TDrive) then copy that 'SomeFolder' into that TDrive folder.  Then,
from a DOS prompt, you can put in:

SUBST T: C:\TDrive

And Whalla, you now have a T: drive, that is really the 'C:\TDrive'
folder.

Anywho...the neat thing I found out about SUBST that I never knew, is
that SUBST actually let's you use non-alpha (some of them...) characters
to create these 'virtual' drive letters.  They don't appear to show up
in Explorer though (at least not in Vista).

I have a folder on my C drive called 'Downloads'.  So in a dos prompt,
the following command:

SUBST $: C:\Downloads

Allowed me to then go:

$:

Which gave me a:

$:\

Prompt, which I could then do a DIR in, and it listed the contents of my
'money' drive! LOL

Ok, I'm a geek! ;)

Drew





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