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Why You Can't Name A File CON In Windows

60 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
Cited on HN 4 times, 2020–2026, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Linked as a relevant explainer in threads about Windows quirks and reserved names.

Tom Scott explains why Windows does not let you name a file CON, tracing the reserved device names back to backwards compatibility with DOS.

“relevant video” (HN, 2020)

3 citations · 1 jokes · Explainers

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@gresrun Apr 2020 Cites it
on HN thread Macintosh Y2020
Excel also has a deliberate bug where it thinks 1900 is a leap year because they wanted compatibility with Lotus 123, where the bug was actually a bug! [0] [0] [this video]
@irshadshalu Jun 2020 Cites it
on HN thread macOS Big Sur Preview
can't speak about the very recent updates, but windows have been consistent and adamant on keeping the backward compatibility. they still use reserved file names for io devices so that 30+ year old printers can still work, and you can still open a 2000s doc file in office 365. (I'm looking at you Apple, who made many of the 32 bit apps I loved useless) relevant video: [this video] (Tom Scott: Why you can't use CON as filename in windows)
Why reserved device names persist in Windows.
@RajT88 May 2023 Cites it
on HN thread The .zip TLD sucks and it needs to be immediately revoked
It's wild to me some of the things I never knew, even though I've been using Windows or DOS for probably 35 years. For example, I recently learned you can't name a file CON. Try it. Somehow over all those decades, I've never tried to do this until Tom Scott made a video about it: [this video]
@cardboard9926 Jun 2026 Makes a joke
on HN thread Coreutils for Windows
Don't think this will ever happen, especially since this is Microsoft you are talking about [0] [0] [this video]

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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